What are best practices for handling user input that may be used in conjunction with the exec function in PHP scripts?

When handling user input that may be used in conjunction with the exec function in PHP scripts, it is important to properly sanitize and validate the input to prevent potential security vulnerabilities such as command injection attacks. One way to do this is by using functions like escapeshellarg() or escapeshellcmd() to escape user input before passing it to the exec function. 

$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];

// Sanitize user input before using it with the exec function
$sanitized_input = escapeshellarg($user_input);

// Execute command with sanitized user input
exec("command " . $sanitized_input);

Keywords

user input exec function security validation escaping

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