exec() is very very slow

[rusew]

I've been googling this for ages and so far, no luck.

 

I'm calling dot to render a graph. When I call it from the command line, it executes in under a second. When I do it with exec(), system(), or back-tick, it takes about a minute.

 

Even more mystifying is that the php executes in under a second on my webserver (media temple), it just takes time on my dev computer (os x snow leopard).

 

The code is like this:

 

$command = "/usr/local/bin/dot -Tgif test.dot -o test.gif"

exec($command);