Checking if a site is up

[Anon]

I am using a script to get data from a site, this works fine, but when the other site is down the script doesn't do anything.

This is the way I do it:

function getdata($path) {
if (!$file = @fopen ($path, "r")) {
$data = "Can't reach remotehost";
return $data;
}

.. Some code to extract the correct data ..

fclose($file);
return $data;
}

The if should do the job, but it doesn't seem to work.

Is there an other way to check if the remote site can be reached?

[petrb]

This is similar, but echos something when the site is not found (and makes the pages available outside of this function):

function checkurl($address) {
global $title;
global $lines_string;
global $lines_array;
$site = trim($address);
$lines_array = @file($site);
if($lines_array == "") {
echo "Sorry, the site you suggested was not found. You may not have included the \"http://\", there could be a typo, or the site is temporarily out of service.<br><br><input type=\"button\" name=\"submit\" value=\"<< Go Back and Check Entry\" onClick=\"window.history.go(-1)\">";
exit;
} else {
$lines_string = implode("", $lines_array);
eregi( "<title>(.*)</title>", $lines_string, $title);
if ($title[1] != "") {
echo "The title: <b> " .$title[1] ."</b><hr>";
echo "Here is the web site: ".$lines_string;
} else {
echo "The title will be listed as <b>$address</b><hr>";
}
}
}

--ph