in reply to Getting a value from a PHP script

you could for example open a new process with the popen call:
$fp = popen ("perl -w really-dont-know-if-this-works.pl", "w");
there are at least two possibilities to pass a value to that new process: via STDIN or via command line (then a system () call would suffice).

note that this "solutions" are NOT beautiful, in fact i suggest to forget them.