How do I start an independant process from a Perl script? I am trying to do a web page that launches a DB search from an input file. I want to do some processing, let the user know via the web page that I got the file and I am going to process it, start a brand new independant process that will actually process the file (this part doesn't communicate with the parent) and end the parent. I have tried exec, fork, open and system, but they all wind up waiting for the second program to finish. The second program processes the input file and mails the results back to the requestor. The problem with waiting is that the files to be processed are large and take a long time to run, which sometimes causes a timeout on the web server, and always upsets the user.

In reply to Spawning a process by locomac

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.