in reply to Passing variables to an SSI script

i'd like to be able to let the end user select a date format by providing some info in their html. i had hoped that something like <!--#exec cmd="cgi-bin/date.cgi --style=5"-->

You might be getting bit by a very obscure fact about HTML comments, which is that the end of the comment is delineated by double dashes. Everything between those and the closing angle bracket is ignored. In your case, that means that a fully standard-compliant SSI implementation might be discarding "style=5 --".

Assuming your .cgi can accept shorter arguments, something like  <!--#exec cmd="cgi-bin/date.cgi -s=5> might work.

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