How to get PID from PHP function exec() in Windows?

Question

I have always used:

$pid = exec(\"/usr/local/bin/php file.php $args > /dev/null & echo \\$!\");

But I am using an XP virtual machine to

Answer 1

I'm using Pstools which allows you to create a process in the background and capture it's pid:

// use psexec to start in background, pipe stderr to stdout to capture pid
exec("psexec -d $command 2>&1", $output);
// capture pid on the 6th line
preg_match('/ID (\d+)/', $output[5], $matches);
$pid = $matches[1];

It's a little hacky, but it gets the job done