What are best practices for handling external PHP programs and executables?

When handling external PHP programs and executables, it is important to ensure security by validating input, sanitizing user input, and avoiding direct execution of user-supplied code. It is recommended to use functions like escapeshellarg() and escapeshellcmd() to sanitize input before passing it to external programs to prevent command injection attacks. 

$unsafe_input = $_POST['user_input'];
$safe_input = escapeshellarg($unsafe_input);

// Example command execution
$command = "php external_script.php $safe_input";
$output = shell_exec($command);

// Do something with the output
echo $output;

Keywords

security escapeshellarg escapeshellcmd proc_open safe mode

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