Question

Take a quick look at the following snippet:

<?
set_time_limit(5);
sleep(30);
echo 'done';
?>

When I execute this on my boxes, the script takes the full 30 seconds, and displays ‘done’.

Why?

Shouldnt it terminate in 5 seconds and not give the script the time to display ‘done’?

This is NOT in CLI mode. Nginx + PHP_FPM.

Any ideas?

---

I have opted to put the ‘answer’ in here as there is quite a few GOOD and VALID answers below. But… It appears to be a specific issue with sleep.

<?
set_time_limit(5);
while(true==true){
}
sleep(30);
echo 'done';
?>

Works as expected.

Answer 1

To quote the manual:

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.

The sleep call doesn’t adds to the execution time because it’s an OS process and nothing is being done.