PHP calling Perl but NOT waiting for Perl to finish??

[WMAdam]

Hello,
What if you want a PHP web page to launch a Perl script but keep it in the background- don't have PHP wait around for its output. I have a PHP page that is supposed to launch a perl script that sends a bunch of email and does database work and I don't want the page waiting around for perl to finish.
Here is the line I use to launch the perl script. (The & is supposed to spawn its own process, yet PHP insists on waiting for the script to complete!)

$cmd = "/usr/bin/perl $perl_path/process_email.pl &> $perl_path/error";
system($cmd);


Any ideas?
thanks!

 

[sleipnir214]

You can't launch the perl script directly.

Have PHP run a script that closes STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR then itself runs the script you want to run in the background.

If you want to run a perl script called "foo.pl", then have PHP run a script called "launcher.pl", which consists of:

#! /usr/bin/perl

close (STDIN);
close (STDOUT);
close (STDERR);

system ("foo.pl &"


PHP will return immediately after launcher.pl ends, but foo.pl will continue running.

 

[WMAdam]

Looks great- thanks a lot for the advice!

 

[sleipnir214]

I feel I must give credit where credit is due.

A smart fellow by the name of Michael Kohn figured out how to do it using a c-language executable as the launcher. I just found his post on the user comments to the online PHP manual and adapted his idea to perl.

You can find Mr. Kohn's elaboration on the idea at:

http://www.naken.cc/mikehup.php

 

[WMAdam]

Very clever idea, nonetheless. I very much appreciate the help!