SAMS Teach Yourself Perl in 24 Hours THIRD EDITION

Cookies

In Hour 23, “Complex Forms,” you learned how to make your web browser remember information between web pages by using hidden fields in HTML. You must understand this process because you might need to pass information from one instance of a CGI program to another. The only way to do this is to store a piece of information with the browser.

Another way to store information with the browser is to use HTTP cookies. HTTP cookies are pieces of information passed between the browser and the CGI program during the HTTP connection. Using cookies can be a much more flexible method of storing information with a browser than using hidden HTML fields.

You can think of a cookie as a movie theater ticket. You can go to the theater ticket booth and obtain ...