Best practice for long job? Process many files/entries

[StewardManscat]

Need to write an "integrity check" script to ensure files match database entries.

Seems the designers put all files in one directory. Thousands of them.

Need this script to run for many installs: virtual hosts etc. Ie cannot count on extending php limits for execution time etc.

(1)
What is the best way to break this task into something that will refresh itself and continue? Can it be done without resorting to javascript? Pure php code?

So that ie 10000 entries could be processed in 100 passes of 100 each.

(2)
Any tricks for 'remembering' where I was inside an opendir/readdir loop processing all files in a directory? Doesn't seem like there is any guarantee the OS will return files in the same order?

Many thanks for your suggestions.

[wilku]

You can set execution time limit from within the script with [man]set_time_limit[/man] - you don't need to count on php.ini.

If this script will run from the browser, you can echo meta refresh after each part, with current offset in the url. You can use session to store the original list of files instead of reading it each time.
If the script is run from command line, set time limit to 0 and let it execute in one piece.