Question

I have the following PHP code:

shell_exec("(traceroute odesk.com > trace.txt;echo 'traceIsDone'>>trace.txt) &");

This line takes 50 seconds to finish, it worked with ping and when I execute the line in a terminal window it returns immediately:

(traceroute odesk.com > trace.txt;echo 'traceIsDone'>>trace.txt) &

How can I execute that command and immediately after have PHP go to the next line? So not waiting for the shell_exec command to finish?

Answer 1

You should use popen():

Opens a pipe to a process executed by forking the command given by command.

It says it forks the command, ie it starts it in a new thread so it doesn’t block your main thread. Therefore I think that’s what you’d want to use.

You can use it pretty much like fopen() (if you’re familiar with it), using fgets(), fgetss() and fwrite().

popen() in the PHP Manual