#!/usr/bin/perl -wT  
# don't forget -T for cgi scripts

                     ##### First some setup
use CGI;
use strict;

my $cgi = CGI->new;

        # some sort of processing on incomming arguments
my %args;
foreach my $arg (qw/surname firstname dob pet_name/)
{
        my $tainted = $cgi->param($arg) || "";
        ($args{$arg}) = ($tainted =~ m!([\w _/.-]+)!;   # pick your safe
                                                        # input characters
}

print $cgi->header;

                     ##### Now some options/interpretations

        ####
        # a) call fish.cgi with these results and display it's output.
        #    this script may be on another server:
{
        use LWP::UserAgent;
        $SIG{ALRM} = sub {die "LWP request timed out."};
        my $url = "http://www.somewhere.com.au/fish.cgi";
                # add any query string you want here ie:
        my $clean_surname = $cgi->escape($args{surname});
        $url .= "?surname=$clean_surname";

        # Create a user agent object
        my $ua = new LWP::UserAgent;

                # create the request object (POST or GET)
        my $req = new HTTP::Request ("POST" => $url);
                # Set the POSTed input (if necessary)
                # I'm certain there's a better way to do this.
        my $input;
        foreach my $value (keys(%args))
        {
                my $clean_value = $cgi->escape($args{$value});
                $input .= "$value=$clean_value\n";
        }

                # Set the content type if necessary
        $req->content_type('application/x-www-form-urlencoded');

                # Give the request object the POSTed input
        $req->content($input);

        my $content;
        eval {
                alarm(60);      # time out after 1 minute

                # Pass request to the user agent and get a response back
                my ($code, $msg, $headers);
                my $res = new HTTP::Response ($code, $msg, $headers, $content);
                $res = $ua->request($req);

                # Get our content
                $content = $res->content();

                ### Finished call to the other script, so cancel the alarm
                alarm(0);
        };

                # Check for error
        if($@ =~ /timed out/)
        {
                die $@;
        }
        # else do something with $content
        print $content;
}


        ####
        # b) Call a script from some directory directly (without LWP)
        #    and grab the results
{
        my $otherscript = "/some/directory/somewhere/script.pl";

                # pretend we're using CGI in this script and that
                # we've set it up (different for different versions) to 
                # be okay with stuff like: surname=foo etc
        my $input;
        $input = "surname=$args{surname} firstname=$args{firstname}";
                # etc, the foreach above is better than this of course.

                # if you want results here to be an array of lines,
                # where the first element of the array is the first line
                # returned and the second is the second line returned etc
                # s/\$results/@results/ and it'll behave that way
        my $results = qx/$otherscript $input/;

                # do something with our results:
        print $results;
}

        ####
        # c) Call another script from some directory directly 
        # and have it take over things from here:
{
        my $otherscript = "/some/directory/somewhere/script.pl";

        my $input;
        $input = "surname=$args{surname} firstname=$args{firstname}";

        exec($otherscript, $input);
                # the end, this script won't come back from here.
}