cURL in PHP: curl_exec() or exec('curl')?

Question

I've been wondering whether, despite of the obvious fact of granting access to the system shell, are there any performance flaws in using exec('curl') instead of curl_exec(), which demands a lot of pre-configuration and, thus, developing time, but is integrated with PHP, and what about threading and system resources?

Greetings :)

Answer 1

It's totally different, curl_exec() is a function call, whereas exec() spawns another process.