proc_open() on Windows

Sometimes you need to communicate with other processes from within a PHP program. The proc_open() function executes a command by starting a separate process and opens pipes for input (STDIN, for instance) and output (STDOUT, for instance) to and from the process started by the command. A pipe is a communication channel that can be used for communication between processes.

In earlier PHP versions, the maximum number of pipes on Windows was hardcoded to 16. You can now use an arbitrary amount of pipes, limited by the available memory. When building software for Windows, we have encountered some issues with regards to using pipes in PHP. Refer to the PHP manual for more information.