Question

I have the following code inside a file (I’m running it directly via Terminal or I access the webpage, it makes no difference).

error_reporting(E_ALL ^ E_NOTICE);
ini_set('display_errors', true);
ini_set('max_execution_time', 1);
ini_set('memory_limit', '512M');
sleep(2);
echo ini_get('max_execution_time');

And it outputs 1. Should it not throw an error, saying that the execution time was excedeed?

From phpinfo() I get:

max_execution_time  1   55
memory_limit    512M    1024M

Answer 1

sleep() time does not count toward execution time because it is not executing any code while it is sleeping.

Note:

The set_time_limit() function and the configuration directive
max_execution_time only affect the execution time of the script
itself. Any time spent on activity that happens outside the execution
of the script such as system calls using system(), stream operations,
database queries, etc. is not included when determining the maximum
time that the script has been running. This is not true on Windows
where the measured time is real.

This includes sleep(), as is mentioned several times in the comments for both sleep() and for set_time_limit(), e.g.

riki151205-Jun-2007 05:29

Please note that, under Linux, sleeping
time is ignored, but under Windows, it counts as execution time.