What exactly are you trying to do? There is an important distinction between what is happening client side i.e. Javascript, and what is happening inside a CGI application, which happens server side.

It could be that you are using ActiveState's perlscript and both Perl and Javascript are happening client side. But, I assume that your Perl is running server side.

Note, for Javascript to call a CGI application, it does this by invoking a new URL. This causes the browser to bring up a new page, without passing back a return value, because you are not returning into the Javascript.

One possibility though is to use frames. The new URL is loaded into a different target frame, and the new page for this frame contains some Javascript to call a function in your original frame to signify completion.

hth --rW