print $reply_to_user;

die "cannot fork: $!" unless defined ( my $pid = fork() );

if ( $pid ) { #this is the parent.
        exit;
    } else { #this is the child
    open STDOUT, '>/dev/null' or die "Can't write to /dev/null: $!";
        sleep( 10 );
        #do stuff
}
[download]

update: thanks, Randal. ( btw, you don't have to plug your column each post, you're already famous. ;)

Additional update:Intrepid: I left STDERR alone because it should be connected to the web server error log, which is probably where you want the errors from a CGI.

ncw: Well, I am certainly a lover of doing it the easy way! :) Thanks for that, I've been using a home rolled Daemon module, but I see that I don't need to. But, is this a daemon? Proc::Daemon seems to close STDERR, so then we have to reopen it somehow to get the errors back into the webserver logs where we need them.

Paris Sinclair    |    4a75737420416e6f74686572
pariss@efn.org    |    205065726c204861636b6572
I wear my Geek Code on my finger.

You need to have the kid close STDOUT as well. I say this many times in my Web Techniques columns.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

Or if you are feeling lazy you can do all the above forking, closing, reopening etc with :-

use Proc::Daemon;

#...

Proc::Daemon::Init();
[download]

make it more portable this way:

use File::Spec;
 my $devnul = File::Spec->devnull();
print $reply_to_user;
die "cannot fork: $!" unless defined ( my $pid = fork() );
if ( $pid ) { #this is the parent.
        exit;
    } else { #this is the child
open STDOUT, ">$devnul"  or die "Can't write to nowhere: $!";
open STDERR, ">$devnul"  or die "Can't write to nowhere: $!";
        sleep( 10 );
        #do stuff
}
[download]

This is a suggestion I have not tried, but BTW on WinNT the string value in $devnul is 'nul'.

Good Meditations,
soren andersen (Intrepid)

Q: What is the sound of several hundred Perler-dogs chasing cool code?
A: YAPC - YAPC - YAPC .. ! :)

If you wanted to clean the queue out every few minutes instead of waiting for sendmail to do it, you could always set up a cron job to run "sendmail -qSfoo@bar.com" where foo@bar.com is the "From" address on your email.

• Write the e-mail data to a directory somewhere. Have a cron job run and pass those pseudo-queued messages off to your MTA every 5 minutes.
• Write another program that uses a named pipe or a socket. Have your CGI program connect to the other, pass the data through and return, and let the other program handle the delay. (Could be tricky if you're sleeping while another instance of the CGI program wants to connect.)

If you aren't worried about portability, use at

- Matt