Question

I need to execute a directory copy upon a user action, but the directories are quite large, so I would like to be able to perform such an action without the user being aware of the time it takes for the copy to complete.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Assuming this is running on a Linux machine, I’ve always handled it like this:

exec(sprintf('%s > %s 2>&1 & echo $! >> %s', $cmd, $outputfile, $pidfile)); 

This launches the command $cmd, redirects the command output to $outputfile, and writes the process id to $pidfile.

That lets you easily monitor what the process is doing and if it’s still running.

function isRunning($pid){     try{         $result = shell_exec(sprintf('ps %d', $pid));         if( count(preg_split('/\n/', $result)) > 2){             return true;         }     }catch(Exception $e){}      return false; }