PHP and Threads

[Anon]

I'm wondering if there is a way to execute threads in PHP, as the way they are in Java (without using Java). For example I have a PHP file that pulls down XML files (100's of them) from the web and since there is a bottleneck on the fread() opening the files remotely, I would like to be able to have it pulling down say 4-12 at a time. I was just wondering if there is a way to create a thread for each file so I can have increased speed.

[van__]

Yes and NO.

If you are on *nix, you can recompile PHP as CGI with the following option:
--enable-pcntl

This allows you to use the process control functions for PHP.

Note: You CANNOT compile this feature into the HTTP Server version since this feature will spawn it's own daemon process.

Now go here and read up about all the lovely world of PCNTL in PHP:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.pcntl.php