popen in write mode problem...

[mailjol]

I am trying to start a process using popen function and wish to write data to it. But I do not wish the calling script to wait for the process to end so I use the '&' operator. This is what I am doing:

$handle = popen('process &', 'w');
fwrite($handle, $data);
pclose($handle);

As expected the calling script doesn't wait and returns immediately but the process doesn't get the data either. Is there a workaround to this?

Thanks,
Akash