why set_time_limit() do not work

[Anon]

My system is Redhat 7.0 linux default complete installed. I found the set_time_limit() and max_execution_time do not work.
My programme:
<?php
set_time_limit(5);
for ($i=1;$i<=10;$i++){
sleep(1);
echo $i,":";
}
?>
the result after run is:
1:2:3:4:5:6:7:8:9:10:
why? max_execution_time is set default 30,
if I change $i<=50; the result after run will echo 1:2:...:50: too!

It should stop at 5, but set_time_limit() did not wrok.

[Anon]

I went to look at the sleep function and found this comment at http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.sleep.php

It seems, that 'max_execution_time' is based on ALARM signal, thus sleep() breaks its functionality!

So, it seems like the set_time_limit and sleep work on different timers.

It does work, I had a script that imported a CSV file into a database, took over an hour to run... so I used set_time_limit for 5 minutes, and it allowed the script to run.

See, I think that the set_time_limit only counts time ACTUALLY executing PHP code, so your sleep(1) probably isn't even counted. Maybe someone can verifiy this.