The Common Gateway Interface (CGI)
What is CGI ?
The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a specification for integrating external
applications and web servers. These external applications are usually called CGI scripts
or CGI applications. There are a wide variety of CGI applications available from many
different sources, and of course you can write your own. CGI applications are often used
to create hit counters, shopping carts, search engines, and other kinds of content that
needs to be constantly updated or that needs to respond to visitor input. CGI is a simple
specification that is supported by all major web servers.
Perl CGI Programming
Perl is the most widely used programming language for writing CGI scripts (Perl is
considered a scripting language so Perl applications are usually called scripts). However
CGI applications can be written in almost any programming language, including Pascal.
Irie Pascal CGI Programming
Irie Pascal's string handling extensions, database programming support, and built-in
support for parsing and decoding URL encoded text, make it an ideal CGI development tool.
In fact Irie Pascal was used to write all of the CGI applications on this website. For
example the CGI application (cgimail) that powers the feedback form was
written with Irie Pascal. The site navigation drop down list at the top of each page of
this website, was also written using Irie Pascal.
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