How to keep a long script going?

Anon

I have a script with a while loop that sends a MIME compliant e-mail out to all the subscribers.. problem is that it is a little slow, and the scripts dies after 30 seconds because its "taking too long".

I am sure that I can up this timer, but that is not the ideal solution. Anyone know a better way to have a PHP script running in the background?

-Brian

Anon

Also, while I am at it -- anyone know a good way to send someone whichever mail type they will best understand (Mime or Plain texT)?

Anon

I do the same, but actually output results of the e-mail sends. (I have a database with multiple lists and such, the output is which e-mails it was sent to.) This keeps it from timing out as well.

Anon

Put set_time_limit(0); at the top of the script.

--Joe
http://www.miester.org

Anon

You can up the timer, as you say, but if you make it too long the user's
browser may time out. If the background part really has to be done
in PHP, I understand it is possible to compile the mod_php and cgi
versions on the same system. But it might be just as well to write
out the data (e.g. if it's just a list of addressees) to a local file
and then exec a shell script that starts a perl program in the background.