How do you get the HTTP status code for a remote domain in php?

Question

I would like to create a batch script, to go through 20,000 links in a DB, and weed out all the 404s and such. How would I get the HTTP status code for a remote url?

Answer 1

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum88/12559.htm a quick bit of googling found this link. The most up-to date version is near the bottom.