Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition

CGI.pm

The Perl module called CGI.pm does everything we discuss and more. Many professionals use it, and we are often asked why we don’t show it here. The answer is that to get started, you need to know what is going on under the hood and that is what we cover here. In fact, I tried to start with CGI.pm and found it completely baffling. It wasn’t until I abandoned it and got my hands in the cogs that I understood how the interaction between the client’s form and the server’s script worked. When you understand that, you might well choose to close the hood in CGI.pm. But until then, it won’t hurt to get to grips with the underlying process.