Tools    (01)

Fortunately for you, many people have written programming libraries that will parse CGI input and output for you. All you need to worry about is the application itself rather than the CGI parsing and decoding. Here are two packages written by former HCS presidents - Steve Brenner, '92 and myself, '96.    (02)

• cgi-lib.pl (for Perl)    (03)
• cgihtml (for C)    (04)

You can find other tools for Perl, C, and other languages at the Web Developer's Virtual Library.    (05)

References    (06)

This was a very incomplete summary of CGI. You should have a decent conceptual understanding of CGI, and given some trial and error, you should be able to successfully start programming CGI. Other online references you will want to refer to are:    (07)

• NCSA CGI Specification    (08)
• W3 Orgs specs for HTTP, HTML, CGI, etc.    (09)
• WWW FAQ    (010)
• CGI FAQ    (011)

Finally, two books you may want to examine, both written by former HCS presidents:    (012)

• CGI Developer's Guide, by Eugene Kim    (013)
• Introduction to CGI/Perl, by Steven Brenner and Edwin Aoki    (014)

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