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When PHP runs as a cgi, that function is not available.
However, you do not need it to accomplish your goals, which
is having some other program executed at the same time as
your php script, likely with output emitted as part of the html
returned by the php script.

In order to do this, you must first set in the PHP script
whatever environmental variables your second script needs to
use, such as REQUEST_METHOD and QUERY_STRING. Then,
you execute the secondary script with a shell command with
PHP.

For example, suppose you want your PHP script to display the
output of a perl script that you wanted to run like:


virtual('/cgi-bin/myscript.pl?arg=value');

Instead of the above in your PHP, you would do this:




putenv('REQUEST_METHOD=GET');

putenv('QUERY_STRING=arg=value');

passthru("/htdocs/www/cgi-bin/myscript.pl");

Notice that when using virtual() you refer to the script to be
executed by a path that begins at the Apache
DOCUMENT_ROOT, which is in most cases /htdocs/www on
the physical filesystem. However, when exec'ing the script
from a shell, you refer to it using the entire path starting at
your home directory, which is "/".

Also, myscript.pl must have executable permissions such as
chmod 755.

The only change you need to make to myscript.pl would be to
get rid of any content type header that it output when called
by virtual(), such as:


print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

Any line such as the above is now no longer needed when
you exec your script through a shell as described in this
document and it should therefore be deleted or commented
out, otherwise you will get that output printed in your PHP
page.