hey all,

i thought i could run a script from PHP in the background
just using the & in the shell_exec function. however, the
page seems to go until the script is done executing...it
usually times out because the scripts take several minutes
to run. what am i missing?

-- start

shell_exec('./myscript.pl &');
--end

The only documentation I could find on this feature was using the system() function, rather than the one you used. Couldn't find anything on the ampersand functionality you're referring to.

This may apply:
Note: If you start a program using this function and want to leave it running in the background, you have to make sure that the output of that program is redirected to a file or some other output stream or else PHP will hang until the execution of the program ends.

Also, I think the ampersand you're referring to may actually be passing the second parameter in by reference:

// this will execute process.php asynchronously; not waiting for completion before executing the next one.
$array = array('apple', 'banana', 'pear');
foreach($array as $i)
{
system("php process.php \"fruit=$i\"");
}

// this will execute process.php 3 times, waiting for the prior command to complete before starting a new one
$array = array('apple', 'banana', 'pear');
foreach($array as $i)
{
system("php process.php \"fruit=$i\"", $status);
}

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.system.php

-SN