cgi-lib.pl

The cgi-lib.pl library that was become the firs standard perl library to help parse and deal with CGI Web based interfaces. It has largely been superseded by cgi.pm -- a much larger object oriented cgi processing module (see below) also cgi-lite.pl.

Howevr many examples (see next section) and many text books still use cgi-lib.pl and it is relatively straightforward to use.

The cgi-lib.pl Perl library simply consists of handy, easy-to-use Perl functions. The library is more than simply a means of processing CGI input. The library includes subroutines to:

• Read and parse CGI input -- a value(s) for a given name can be easily found.
• Conveniently format CGI output.
  • Conveniently return Headers and Bottoms of standard CGI output.
  • Conveniently return URLs.
  • Conveniently return CGI Error Codes.
• Print in HTML format all name/value pairs input.
• Print in HTML format Environment variables.

The cgi-lib.pl input routines can accept all and process all methods of input (e.g. GET and POST methods). You do not have to worry about which mechanism has been adopted.

Let us now develop a minimal.pl CGI routine that accepts input form our minimal form and sends back HTML that echoes the input data. We will use the cgi-lib.pl.