When using readfile() -- using PHP on Apache -- is the file immediately read into Apache\'s output buffer and the PHP script execution completed, or does the PHP script exec
downloading files thru php isnt very efficient, using a redirect is the way to go. If you dont want to expose the location of the file, or the file isnt in a public location then look into internal redirects, here is a post that talks about it a bit, Can I tell Apache to do an internal redirect from PHP?