What are the differences of system(), exec() and shell_exec() in PHP?

exec — Execute an external program

system — Execute an external program and display the output

shell_exec — Execute command via shell and return the complete output as a string

so if you don’t need the output, I would go with exec.

Further details:

• http://php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php
• http://php.net/manual/en/function.system.php
• http://php.net/shell_exec