CLI script & exec() - how to control what gets dumped on the screen.

I have been trying to figure out how to use exec to run some commandline
scripts (some perl scripts & mysql in this case) WITH the output of the commands
run via exec being shown on the screen.

neither of these examples have the desired effect:

$output = array(); $exit = 0;
exec('apache2ctl graceful', $output, $exit);


$output = array(); $exit = 0;
@exec('apache2ctl graceful', $output, $exit);

please someone tell me there is a decent way to do this (something
to do with STD input/output redirection or something?) and that I'm not left
with trying something like:

ob_start();
$output = array(); $exit1 = $exit2 = 0;
@exec('apache2ctl graceful', $output, $exit1);
ob_end_clean();

.... of which I don't even know if it would work.

anyone care to share their clue?
.

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