SAMS Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours THIRD EDITION

More Details on Calling CGI Programs

So far, you've learned two different techniques for starting a CGI program. The first and most obvious is simply to call the CGI program's URL from a link or have the user type it in the browser. A line like this will start and run a CGI program called time.cgi:

<A HREF="http://server/cgi-bin/time.cgi">Click here for the time</A>

When this link is followed, the web server runs the CGI program time.cgi, and its output is displayed as a new web page. This example is simple, easy, and straightforward—just like the “Hello, World!” CGI program in Hour 17, “Writing Modules.”

The other way to start a CGI program is to make it the target of an HTML form. For example, the following form calls the CGI program process.cgi ...