Perl and cgi for the world wide web

Perl is by far the most popular programming language for creating scripts that add powerful interactive features to Web pages. Included on most UNIX platforms and available free of charge for Windows and Macintosh, Perl lets you place forms on your Web site that collect and process user input such as product orders and comments, enable visitors to conduct keyword searches for information on your site, and integrate a database into your site, among many other capabilities.Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide gets you to the heart of Perl scripting with CGI. Even first-time programmers will be able to create interactive Web pages and, more importantly, you'll be able to use your new-found familiarity with Perl to understand and customize the multitude of scripts that already exist on the Web. Following on the huge success of Liz Castro's top-selling HTML:Visual QuickStart Guide-the book to have to learn or reference HTML-Castro's Perl and CGI for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide is soon to becomethe choice for learning Perl and CGI. Author of the acclaimed, best-selling HTML:Visual QuickStart Guide, with over 100,000 copies sold. Teaches you all you need to know to start creating CGI scripts in Perl. Shows how to make your Web pages stand out with interactive features such as guest books and forms. Assumes no prior programming experience.

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Perl Building Blocks
• Chapter 2: Creating Perl CGI Scripts
• Chapter 3: Getting Data from Visitors
• Chapter 4: Environment Variables
• Chapter 5: Getting Data into the Script
• Chapter 6: Working with Scalars
• Chapter 7: Working with Arrays
• Chapter 8: Conditional Statements
• Chapter 9: Subroutines
• Chapter 10: Working with Hashes
• Chapter 11: Analyzing Data
• Chapter 12: Remembering What Your Visitors Tell You
• Chapter 13: Printing and HTML
• Chapter 14: Files and Directories
• Chapter 15: Debugging
• Chapter 16: Using Other Folks' Scripts
• Appendix A: Parsing Form Input
• Appendix B: Permissions
• Appendix C: Security
• Appendix D: Unix Essentials
• Appendix E: Perl and CGI Resources