Webhosting Perl and CGI Scripts

You can upload scripts to anywhere on your web site. You can make a cgi-bin directory if you like, but scripts can be included anywhere on your web site.

Simple shell scripts can start with #!/bin/sh, #!/bin/bash, or (if you must) #!/bin/csh (but see why you should not)

For Perl, the script should start with #!/usr/bin/perl

Python is not available.

Particularly for scripts uploaded from windows machines, please upload in ASCII mode not BINARY.

Within the script, the mail program used for sending mail is /usr/lib/sendmail . You should not use this with the -t argument (which find the From and To in the email) but use -f 'from-email-address' 'to-email-address' in place of the -t argument.

A simple mailer is available - Webhosting Form Mailer

There are various Perl scripts available on the internet, and many books on the subject. You do not have access to php or mysql on the server, and you may have to change the use of sendmail as above.

Environment Variables

Your scripts have access to the following environment variables :-

QUERY_STRING	The query string (bit after the ? in the URI)
PATH_INFO	If after the script there is a / and more of a path then this is that path
PARAMS	The parameters (bit after a ; in the URI)
REQUEST_METHOD	PUT or GET
REQUEST_URI	The URI (web page) requested
HTTP_HOST	Host: header contents Your web site name
HTTP_AGENT	User-Agent: header contents The browser being used
CONTENT_TYPE	Content-type: header contents Used for form postings
CONTENT_LENGTH	Content-length: header contents Number of bytes in PUT file
SCRIPT_NAME	The name of the script being run
HTTP_COOKIE	Cookie: header contents
HTTP_FROM	From: header contents
HTTP_REFERER	Referrer: header contents The page this link came from
REMOTE_USER	If a login was required, this is set to theuser name
REMOTE_ADDR	The remote IP address.This could be an IP6 or IP4 address.

Further Notes

The output from the script must include Content-Type: header and may include other headers then a blank line and the contents. The only exception is a redirection in which case it can just contain the Location: header.

Error Log

If you have a file called errlog.txt in the top level, then any error output from any scripts on your site is appended to this file. This is useful for debugging.

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