mysqlimport & exec()

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