note
rob_au
Another option, building upon the column by [merlyn] linked to by [atcroft], would be to employ the Javascript XMLHttpRequest object to communicate with the server and update an element of your web page with the progress (as reported by the server) of a detached, long-running process. The advantage which this method would have (to my mind) is that you could browse away from the page and return at a later stage to check on progress (or have the process checked upon by non-initiators of the long-running process).
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<tt><font size="-1">perl -le "print unpack'N', pack'B32', '00000000000000000000001000000000'"</font></tt>
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