What is the purpose of the function log_output in the PHP code provided?

The purpose of the function log_output in the PHP code provided is to log the output of a given command to a specified log file. This function takes in two parameters: the command to execute and the path to the log file where the output will be logged. To implement the fix, we need to define the log_output function and use PHP's exec function to execute the command and redirect the output to the specified log file using the '>>' operator. We can use the following code snippet to achieve this:

function log_output($command, $log_file) {
    $output = shell_exec($command . ' >> ' . $log_file);
    file_put_contents($log_file, $output, FILE_APPEND);
}

// Example usage
log_output('ls -la', 'output.log');