Can a PHP script start another PHP script and exit?

Question

How can a PHP script start another PHP script, and then exit, leaving the other script running?

Also, is there any way for the 2nd script to inform the PHP script when i

Answer 1

You can create a request and close the connection right after it is done being written to.

Checkout the code in http://drupal.org/project/httprl as can do this (non-blocking request). I plan on pushing this lib to github once I get it more polished; something that can be ran outside of drupal. This should do what your looking for.