Unable to change working directory using shell_exec() in php

Question

Iam working on my own php MVC. And now, I wanted to create a cli tool for starting a live server which can be used for development purposes. I'm using laravel-zero for building my cli. All the commands are working fine except the command that is supposed to start a server. To start my server, first I need to change my current working directory to public and then start a php server using 'php -S localhost:9000'

I have tried the below code, but it doesn't work:

shell_exec("cd public");
shell_exec("php -S localhost:9000");

I have also tried this, but this too doesn't work:

shell_exec("cd public ; php -S localhost:9000");

Finally after lots of google searches, I tried this, but the same result:

chdir("public");
shell_exec("php -S localhost:9000");

All It shows is just 'The system cannot find the path specified.'

Answer 1

If your current directory when running shell_exec() is your installation root directory, you can just add the path after php

shell_exec("php -S localhost:9000 -t public/");

But since you are using laravel, why dont you just run php artisan serve