How can make my CGI script 'look' like a cron job has run?

In the configuration, users will designate a time each day when everyone is logged OUT of their IN/OUT board. Whenever the script is run to check the board, it should look to see whether it is time (or past time) to log everyone out and whether it has already happened. I thought maybe I could somehow use a semaphore file and/or 'stat' the file.

Does anyone have a code snippet that does this?

The crontab alternatives I have found try too hard to act like real cron jobs, and I want to keep this very simple and transparent for the users.

Thanks,

--lnl


In reply to Simple crontab alternative by lnl

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.