PHP:How to connect to a unix box, run a script and ftp back the generated file to local box

the perl script has to be web-accessible if you want it to be run by a remote host.
one of the things you can do is put it in your cgi-bin directory.
the text file it generates should be dumped (ofcourse) in an ftp-readable directory or (this is easier, imho) it could put it somewhere in one of your web-accessible directories.

depending on the option you choose (i'm assuming you want ftp):
ftp:
<?php
  $ftpconn = ftp_connect($ftpserver); //$ftpserver = IP or FQDN
  $ftplogin = ftp_login($ftpconn, $ftpuser, $ftppass);
  $fp =  fopen("path_to_where_file_has_to_be_saved", "w");
  if ($ftpconn && $ftplogin) { //both are booleans
     if (ftp_fget($ftpconn, $savefilepath, "remote_filename", FTP_ASCII)){
       echo "File successfully downloaded";
     }
  }
  ftp_close($ftpconn);
?>

(if you saved the file on a webaccessible server, it'd be something like this:)
<?php
  $remotefp = fopen("http://servername/filename.txt, "r");
  $fp = fopen(("path_to_where_file_has_to_be_saved", "w");
  do {
    $data = fread($remotefp, 4096);
    if strlen($data) == 0) {
      break;
    }
    fputs($fp, $data);
  }
  fclose($fp);
  fclose($remotefp);
?>

hope this helps,

cheers,
Andy

oops: to run the remote cgi-script:

<?php
  $runscript = fopen("http://servername/cgi-bin/script.pl");
  fclose($runscript);
?>

should do it afaik :-)

So I would run first run my perl script and then do the ftp. So there is just no way to do without accessing this perl script through URL. I mean doesn't PHP provide anything that would allow you to run something like SSH and then run the script at the  remote server and then run the ftp to get the file back?