Drop connection, keep running?

I'm surprized I can't find a description of how to do what seems like an obvious thing to me: I want to have my script send output to the user, then drop the connection, and then continue doing stuff that the user shouldn't have to wait for. There's lots of documentation about what to do when the user drops, but no mention of how to make the server drop it but keep running the script. -- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC