Thanks for the advice. I have now moved the session creation code to after the validation checking on the params that i am giving to the session. I was already using use strict; and have added use warnings; I have also changed the $query variable to $q so that it has the value $q = new CGI, created earlier as suggested by dorward. So the code reads as

if($ENV{REQUEST_METHOD} eq 'POST')
{
    $q = new CGI;

    $username = $q->param('user_name');
    $pword = $q->pword'pwd');

}
#####
validate username and pword
#####


my $cgi;
        #Create a new session
        $session = new CGI::Session("driver:File", undef, {Directory=>
+'./tmp/sessions'});

        #Allow cgi-session read the cookie at the next reques
        $cookie = $q->cookie( -name => $session->name,
                          -value => $session->id );

        print $q->header( -cookie=>$cookie);

        $name = $cgi->param($username);
        $session->param($username, $name);
[download]

Should the value for $cgi at:

        $name = $cgi->param($username);
[download]

be $q as well or rather my $cgi = new CGI? Currently i have it defined at the beginning of the script as my $cgi; It is not causing an issue as at the moment i am still getting the error "Can't call method "cookie" on an undefined value at" Again i would really appreciate your help and suggestions with this problem thanks

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