PHP program execution problem

Hi, I'm a new one with PHP and hava a problem doing a system call, execute a external program. I want from a php script execute a external executable, this executable runs an other program. The problem is that i don't get back the return value from te last program. Example: PHP SCRIPT ------> BINARY EXECUTABLE ------> BINARY EXECUTABLE test.php3 i=system("ls"); ls exec("run ls",$???,$i) return(i); or system("run ls",$i) When i run the program run from command line all went good but from the script not. What can this be?? I also don't know how to implementate te second (arry) variable from the exec function. Does somebody have sample code?? With regards, Jeroen de Vries Email jrvries@formulaforce.net