The browser will hang until it times out. It is waiting for your script to output a header. At the command line I very much doubt that there is a 30 second delay between calling exit and the program exiting with a return of the prompt although it could be executing a long END{ } block. Do you have a line like "$|++;print 'exiting...\n';exit;" that demonstrates this delay?

I use this die_nice function a bit:

sub die_nice {
    my $real_error = shift;
    email($administrator, $real_error);
    log_error(scalar localtime, $real_error);
    tell_user('Sorry the system can not respond to your request due to
+ routine maintenance
              <br>Please try again later')  # yeah, right!
  exit;
}

sub tell_user {
    print "Content-type: text/html\n\n<p>" . shift;
}
[download]

cheers

tachyon

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