Purpose of this book
This book is intended to teach you how to obtain (or write) and install CGI
scripts written in Perl or other programming languages. The focus is
mainly on scripting in Perl, but the installation process is very much the
same for CGI scripts written in any other language.
By providing you with some complete scripts, some subroutines and the
tools for combining them in new ways, I hope to teach you a
mix−and−match approach to solving scripting tasks. I believe that if you
follow the principles taught here, you can be installing CGI scripts on your
Web server/site in a very short time.
Friends, this is not rocket science! Its simply a skill you have not yet
acquired. There was a time (come on...admit it) when you didnt even
know how to surf the Web. You mastered that easily enough, didnt you?
You can pick this up almost as easily. Once youve got it, youll see that it
really wasnt all that hard.
What you will learn
First, you will learn what CGI is, what a script is and how it works. Then,
you will learn about subroutines and how they can be re−used to save lots
of time and effort. Youll discover where to find free CGI scripts and how
to get them. Youll find out how to take a useful subroutine from one script
and use it in another script.
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