Rudi Ahlers wrote: > What I meant was, PHP talks to PHP script engine, which talks to > Apache, which then talks to system commands. - is there a quicker way > of doing it? um, thats somewhat mixed up. user -> browser -> apache -> php that interprets your script -> OS function with a native compiled language like C++, its user -> browser -> apache -> compiled C++ binary -> OS function not really -that- different, as theres far more overhead in all the rest of the process than in the actual script or program,unless its doing something very computationally intensive. also note, PHP is a preloaded module, while your C++ program probably gets forked on every webpage, unless you write it as an apache module... ooops.