php to execute something else?

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is it possible to have a php script execute another script to run in the background, so that the user can keep doing the maintenance?
for example, say you have a HUGE database to search through, and you want to change something, so you have an update statement. now, i want to start that update statement, then have the script keep going, not wait for that to finnish...
it would be nice to execute another script, so that they two could interact, and the user could get some sort of response whenever it's done...

thanks.

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the thing to run in the background can be written in c, or java, or whatever else if php is unable to do this task.

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I belive that this si addresses here in the PHP manual

exec

Note that about 1/2 way down the page it says that you can run ANYTHIGN in the background providing that the OUTPUT is redirected to a file or somethign other than the PHP script itself.

I have never tried it but I guess you could use this to execute another PHP script providign that that new PHP script dumped any results to a FILE