External program execution

[Anon]

Hi,

I have written a bunch of php code, and are now trying to move some of the most cpu intensive code to an external program. This should be possible by using exec.

My code line is:
"exec("php-ex02.exe");"

The program is being executed, but...
1) It pops up in a little ms-dos window at the middle of the screen (I'm running on windows 98 platform). I would like it to run as a hidden background process. Is that possible?

2) The browser (or apache?) hangs after the execution - so nothing of the php code after the code line above is executed - or anything from the external program is returned. How should I avoid this?

...and in general: What do you think about the idea of moving cpu intensive code from php and to an external program compiled specially for the cpu (pascal, c, c++)?

Is there anyone out there who can help me?

[Anon]

look at the article: http://www.e-gineer.com/articles/php-hackers-paradise.phtml
and find his \'timing functions\' to determing how much performance changes by using an external program.

I have no clue how to fix that dos-box problem, since I\'m using PHP under nix, but I know that under nix, there\'s a pretty steep overhead whenever you choose to start a new program.

If your webserver needs to handle a lot of hits, you might be better off just doing everything inline to avoid the overhead of starting new programs, but as with everything, you should check and see how it works yourself.

--Robert

[Anon]

I am using php along with apache on w98. Do you know of way to run external program so that the php script doesn't hang while the external program is running. My problem is that I need to take information from php and put it in external program that does some calculations. The time that it takes for the external program to run, is quite long, up to days. Therefore I don't want the php script to be waiting for the result from it.

Please advice
HJ