Perhaps you could use something based on HTTP::Daemon. merlyn has a few excellent articles on his web site doing something similar using Chatbot::Eliza. Check out the articles with a title like "Doctor is IN", namely Column 23 and Column 24.

The idea is that you have one script that starts out as a CGI, which contains the actual state, and which launches its own small webserver — and keeps running in the background. That one takes over for this session, processing all following requests from the browser, and all in the context of the current application.

In reply to Re: Persist shell app by bart
in thread Persist shell app by geoffeg

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