An important thing to consider is in some cases, like on MacOS, using "2>&1" to properly output string from exec() works well when you wrap the command in parenthesis.
For example:
WITH PARENTHESIS AROUND CMD
$cmd = "(mysqldump -h l ocalhost -u root -ppassword --databases login_practice_db > /Users/username/Desktop/testDB.sql) 2>&1";
$sys = shell_exec($cmd ); //Works and produces an error (localhost is poorly spaced on purpose)
WITHOUT PARENTHESIS AROUND CMD
$cmd = "mysqldump -h l ocalhost -u root -ppassword --databases login_practice_db > /Users/username/Desktop/testDB.sql 2>&1";
$sys = shell_exec($cmd ); //Does nothing and goes blank as if the result were error free. Empty string.
It's interesting how shell command execution can get down to how nuanced one might need to be with string parsing.
