[PHP] mysqlimport & exec()

[Terry Reynolds]

Hi
has anyone in the PHP world ever managed to run mysqlimport via exec?

I have written a one line script 

mysqlimport -u user -ppassword table file.txt

& chmodded it (+ x), which works from the command line every time.
I've tried exec(), system() etc within PHP but with no luck.
I have my own Linux/Apache/Slackware box at an IP and I have tried all relevant files 
& directories (including mysqlimport command) as root.root and nobody.nobody.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
TIA
Terry