PERL & CGI

Perl is a "Practical Extraction and Report Language." It has powerful text-manipulation functions. Perl electronically combines features and purposes of many command languages.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a process used by the server to pass information between the user and an application on the server. With CGI access, you can install Perl scripts on your website for such things as feedback forms, guestbooks, counters, and so on.

Two types of programmers use Perl. System administrators like it for the way it glues together system commands to manipulate data and processes, and for its pattern-matching functions aids in system searches and reporting. People developing electronic forms for Unix Web servers find Perl easier to learn and use than C, and for their purposes Perl offers more built-in or publicly available functions such as easy data validation and simple databases.

If you are new to Perl, we suggest taking the tutorial at Perl.com. However, if you are familiar with Perl our paths are listed below:

absolute path = /home/sites/www.yourdomain.com/web

path to Perl = /usr/bin/perl

path to Python = /usr/bin/python

path to sendmail = /usr/sbin/sendmail

path to the date program = /bin/date

You must name your scripts with a .pl or .cgi extension, or they will not work. For your safty and protection, we use CGIWrap. CGIWrap is a gateway program that allows general users to use CGI scripts and HTML forms without compromising the security of the http server. Scripts are run with the permissions of the user who owns the script. In addition, several security checks are performed on the script, which will not be executed if any checks fail.
If you need help creating, editing or installing a Perl script contact Customer Service or visit our FAQ page for more information. We're always glad to help!