I'm REALLY new at Perl, so few things that go wrong with my scripting attempts suprise me, but this one did. I want to add data to a log that will be read shortly after it's written--in the time it takes for a new page from my site load. If there is already an entry in the log, the script waits about five seconds to give it a chance to get used: 
open(IN, $logfile);
@file = <IN>;
close IN;
if(@file != "")
   {
   for ($count=1; $count<9999999; $count++)
   {}
   open(LOG, ">$logfile");
   print LOG "";
   close (LOG)
   };

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Then the new entry is added. I don't know if it's a good idea to do things this way, but that's not my main concern. My main concern is that an image that's supposed to be printed in the beginning of the script (code not shown), isn't printed until AFTER the do-nothing loop. Without the loop, it's printed alot faster. How can I have the image be displayed and THEN have a delay? Am I just hallucinating?

In reply to Do-nothing loops by Wassercrats

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