Possible Values For: PHP_Os

Possible Values For: PHP_OS

PHP passes through the uname, except on Windows (WINNT) and Netware (Netware). See Wikipedia for a non-exhaustive list of values not mentioned in your question:

• CYGWIN_NT-5.1
• IRIX64
• SunOS
• HP-UX
• OpenBSD (not in Wikipedia)

What is the name of your system with PHP_OS constant

Try php_uname for retrieving operating system information

PHP script - detect whether running under linux or Windows?

Check the value of the PHP_OS constant^Docs.

It will give you various values on Windows like WIN32, WINNT or Windows.

See as well: Possible Values For: PHP_OS and php_uname^Docs:

if (strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3)) === 'WIN') {
    echo 'This is a server using Windows!';
} else {
    echo 'This is a server not using Windows!';
}

How to get the OS on which PHP is running?

PHP has many predefined constants that are often useful.

Here, PHP_OS is the one you are looking for.

For instance, on my current machine, this code :

var_dump(PHP_OS);

Gives :

string 'Linux' (length=5)

You have some examples and comparisons with what the php_uname function can get you on the manual page of php_uname ; for instance (quoting) :

<?php
echo php_uname();
echo PHP_OS;

/* Some possible outputs:
Linux localhost 2.4.21-0.13mdk #1 Fri Mar 14 15:08:06 EST 2003 i686
Linux

FreeBSD localhost 3.2-RELEASE #15: Mon Dec 17 08:46:02 GMT 2001
FreeBSD

Windows NT XN1 5.1 build 2600
WINNT
*/

if (strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3)) === 'WIN') {
    echo 'This is a server using Windows!';
} else {
    echo 'This is a server not using Windows!';
}

That page also says :

For the name of just the operating
system, consider using the PHP_OS
constant, but keep in mind this
constant will contain the operating
system PHP was built on.

Low overhead methodology to determine case sensitivity of OS

With the restriction of not being able to write to the file system i.e.

write A.txt to a known location then try to read a.txt

I do not believe there is a way. Because even with OS sniffing (hacky at best and likely to give incorrect results) that is only referring to the OS... different filesystems on the os can behave differently (ie linux is case sensitive but the cifs share I have mounted is not)

I would say if knowlege of the case sensitivity of an os's filesystem it should be declared in code or config.

Or better build assuming case sensitivity but don't do anything that would break in a case insensitive environment, because anything that works on a case sensitive system will work on a case insensitive system (assuming you don't rely on the behavior of A.php and a.php being two different things which case sensitive or not is just dumb.)

Does PHP have a function to detect the OS it's running on?

PHP has included the constant PHP_EOL for solving the problem you face, available since php 4.3.10 and PHP 5.0.2 - it contains a suitable end-of-line sequence for the server that PHP is running on.

If you want to use a different end-of-line sequence suitable for a particular client, then you'll have to code that yourself. One way to determine the client OS is to use get_browser, assuming your server has an up-to-date browscap.ini

PHP_OS - does it contain OS it was built on or runs on?

I had a look at the source code. The configure script does this:

PHP_OS=`uname | xargs`
AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(PHP_OS,"$PHP_OS",[uname output])

and then main.c does this:

char *php_os;
php_os=PHP_OS;
REGISTER_MAIN_STRINGL_CONSTANT("PHP_OS", php_os, strlen(php_os), CONST_PERSISTENT | CONST_CS);

which means that PHP_OS in PHP is what was in php_os in the C code, which is what was #defined by the header file constructed by the configure script, which is determined by running uname at configuration time.

So, it's the system you were built on, not the system you were running on.

There's some special-cased code for Windows: main.c sets php_os to "WINNT" if WIN32 is defined. But, again, this is at build time, not at run time, even if you manage to compile on Unix and run on Windows or vice versa.

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