On Tue, 6 Jul 1999, Robin Becker wrote:

I'm using various external methods to create GIF files in my current server. These are expensive to produce, but are created on a per user basis eg as the results of a user input.

How can I make these temporary in the sense that they live until the connection is dropped. Which connection? *wonder* HTTP is quite stateless, and opens connections in a client depending order. And usually, when the page is done, NO connections are open.

What you might want to do, is some kind of caching. One way would be to a special Folderish object, let's call it NameGifFactory. When it is traversed, it tries to use a cached version, or it generates a Gif file. Now, for deciding how long to keep the objects, I'd consider abusing the database cache: When the gif image object gets deactivated (written to disc) would seem to be a good moment to delete the image. Andreas -- Win95: n., A huge annoying boot virus that causes random spontaneous system crashes, usually just before saving a massive project. Easily cured by UNIX. See also MS-DOS, IBM-DOS, DR-DOS, Win 3.x, Win98.