<HTML> I am using perl to run a .cgi script that will enable a user to update a move list via FTP. (yes this question is somewhat related to the "big mess CGI/frames" subject, but involves a different problem altogether)

If one proceeds to:

http://www.rit.edu/~ee697b/cgi-bin/filedif.html

and presses the button it will try to run a script that is called "change.cgi". This will run for a long time, seem to do nothing - and then time out.

What change.cgi does is constantly goes to a file called coord.dat, reads from it, and makes another .html out of it called coord.html. This is because it doesn't quite know when a user will update the file via FTP.

The source for the change.cgi can be read at:

http://www.rit.edu/~ee697b/cgi-bin/change.txt

This leads to my question - is there any way in perl to run a .cgi script from a web page in the background? (i.e. click the button once, and the script runs, without the browser thinking it has to reach a destination, and thus wait until it has achieved that destination ?)

Can a process be spawned off, and then expire on its own, later, without the web browser timing out? (I've had this happen before, but only if I run the script directly from my shell account)

OR - is there a way to script a command that temporarily stops the browser *until* a new move pops up (file size is larger, move list array appended by one line, etc...)

Also - this might be asking the same thing as above... is there an equivalent to a "system()" function, as in C, where you can run another .exe or process compiled by another language, process, etc external to perl?

Thanks for your time.

</HTML>

In reply to semi-finite background process by Konda

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