sed doesn't work with PHP exec function - php

Question

echo "sed -i 's/NULL/\\N/g' ".$_REQUEST['para'].".sql";
The above statement works. But it fail when I use it in exec like this...
exec("sed -i 's/NULL//\/\/\N/g' ".$_REQUEST['para'].".sql");

Answer 1

You should escape backslashes with backslashes, not with forward slashes, like this:
exec("sed -i 's/NULL/\\\\N/g' ".$_REQUEST['para'].".sql");
EDIT I wrote the answer without looking at what the code actually does. Don't do this, because $_REQUEST['para'] can be whatever the user wants, which can be used for code injection. Use the PHP functions as the other answer suggests.

Answer 2

Although it's entirely up to you, but my advice is not to call system commands unnecessarily. In PHP, you can use preg_replace() to do the functionality of sed.
preg_replace("/NULL/","\\N",file_get_contents("$_REQUEST['para']"."sql") )

Answer 3

Building on ghostdog's idea, here's code that will actually do what you want (the original code he posted didn't actually read content of the file in):
//basename protects against directory traversal
//ideally we should also do a is_writable() check
$file = basename($_REQUEST['para'].".sql");
$text = file_get_contents($file);
$text = str_replace('NULL', '\\N', $text); //no need for a regex
file_put_contents($file, $text);
Admittedly, however, if the file in question is more than a few meg, this is inadvisable as the whole file will be read into memory. You could read it in chunks, but that'd get a bit more complicated:
$file = basename($_REQUEST['para'].".sql");
$tmpFile = tempnam("/tmp", "FOO");
$in = fopen($file, 'r');
$tmp = fopen($tmpFile, 'w');
while($line = fgets($in)) {
$line = str_replace('NULL', '\\N', $line);
fputs($tmp, $line);
}
fclose($tmp);
fclose($in);
rename($tmpFile, $file);
If the file is 100+ meg, honestly, calling sed directly like you are will be faster. When it comes to large files, the overhead of trying to reproduce a tool like sed/grep with its PHP equivalent just isn't worth it. However, you need to at least take some steps to protect yourself if you're going to do so:
Taking some basic steps to secure amnom's code:
$file = basename($_REQUEST['para'].".sql");
if(!is_writable($file))
throw new Exception('bad filename');
exec("sed -i 's/NULL/\\\\N/g' ".escapeshellarg($file));
First, we call basename, which
strips any path from our filename
(e.g., if an attacker submitted the
string '/etc/passwd', we'd at least
now be limiting them to the file
'passwd' in the current working
directory
Next, we ensure that the file is, in
fact, writable. If not, we
shouldn't continue
Finally, we escapeshellarg() on the file. Failure to do so allows arbitrary command execution. e.g., if the attacker submitted the string /etc/passwd; rm -rf /; #, you'd end up with the command sed 's/blah/blah/' /etc/passwd; rm -rf /; #.sql. It should be clear that while that exact command may not work, finding one that actually would is trivial.