Calling External Program Asynchronously

[Anon]

Hi, I have a problem.
How to call external program which will create a new thread in PHP ? I want to do this so newly-spawned external program runs in its own thread, and the calling PHP script does not have to wait the spawned program (just like fire and forget).
Does exec() function overcome this problem ?

I really appreciate any help regarding this topic.

[kparker]

Try ending the command line with &. If that doesn't work, then have exec call a script which itself schedules something in the background.

[frymaster]

exec() will, technially not fork yer pid. i'd use system(). Backgrounding will prevent your php script from blocking pending successful execution, but if you need to know the pid for your newly formed process then you're going to have to do some fancy coding...