Copy directories in PHP, using system vs not simple recursive PHP code

Question

I see there is not a built-in way to copy dirs in PHP. I saw Copy entire contents of a directory to another using php but I could not find any issue with system('cp -R src dest').

Is there an issue with using the above system call? I assume the only "problem" is it will create one extra process for a fraction of a second. Right?

I will clarify, in this scenario, I do not develop an off-the-shelf product that has to be platform independent, nor the src or dest are coming from user input, they are 100% clean. Only problem I see (as was pointed out below) is error handling.

This seems an accepted way to do it: http://stackoverflow.com/a/2050909/980615 — Jelle de Fries, Mar 13 '15 at 14:18
I saw that, I don't get why it is accepted and what is the advantage over one simple command line. That is my question, I guess. — Itay Moav -Malimovka, Mar 13 '15 at 14:20
Maybe because executing a command isn't platform independent? — Jelle de Fries, Mar 13 '15 at 14:21
hmmm...I do not write a shelf product. I have 100% control on the system I am deploying my code. — Itay Moav -Malimovka, Mar 13 '15 at 14:22
This thread has a nice discussion: http://stackoverflow.com/a/7625302/980615 — Jelle de Fries, Mar 13 '15 at 14:24

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:24

Assuming src and dest are not hardcoded you have to carefully escape input against shell injections
This probably won't be cross platform compatible
Error handling will become more difficult as you probably have to parse shell output/stderr

Edit:

When assuming src & dest are clean and cross platform compatibility won't be an issue, then only problem that still stands is error handling - php copy() will explicitly return false in case of failure (for example incorrect filesystem permissions) and can be turned into custom recursive function.

Mayble Laravel FileSystem will help you - it is widely used and should be well tested: https://github.com/laravel/framework/blob/master/src/Illuminate/Filesystem/Filesystem.php

In order to see how to get stderr for shell commands, see: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2320835/294696

Your points make sense in a general scenario. In my case the src/dest are generated from the code and from numerical ids that where cleaned and I do not work on a platform independent/shelf product. I will modify my question to spot those points — Itay Moav -Malimovka, Mar 13 '15 at 14:26

Copy directories in PHP, using system vs not simple recursive PHP code

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