Re: Differences between MAC and PC

Kailua362,

A quick seach on Google leads me to think you've bought a copy of Perl & CGI for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide. The author seems to mention CGI.pm, then proceeds to use a hand rolled parser, namely subparseform.lib. Furthermore, the author admits that subparseform.lib is less than optimal in that it doesn't handle "special characters" (e.g. @ $ < >) very well.

I'm hoping the author is using a simple CGI parser for illustrative reasons only and recommends using CGI.pm for everything else. If the author doesn't stress CGI.pm, I'd suggest taking a look at Ovid's "Web Programming Using Perl" Course. It's all online and it's free.

CGI.pm is the industry standard, is a part of the standard Perl installation, and most importantly it is safe and it works.

Aloha and Cheers!

Brent

-- Yeah, I'm a Delt.

Update: For a more complete discussion of why one should avoid using something besides CGI.pm, you should really look at this thread: use CGI or die.

Comment on Re: Differences between MAC and PC

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Re: Re: Differences between MAC and PC by Kailua362 (Novice) on Mar 31, 2002 at 01:59 UTC
Aloha, Yes, you are correct about using the Visual Quickstart Guide Book. The book had a site that down loaded subparse_form.lib. Is there a better alternative to subparse_form.lib? Were can I download a better version of the CGI. If only I could parse data I think I would be well on my way. Mahalo. Joseph W. Guillaume	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Differences between MAC and PC by dorko (Prior) on Apr 01, 2002 at 07:04 UTC
There's a guide to installing modules by tachyon, but I'm guessing CGI.pm already installed on your system. If your running the ActiveState version of Perl on a Windows machine, you can quickly see what's installed by opening a DOS window and typing 'ppm'. Once PPM is running, do a 'verify' and that will tell you what packages you have installed and wether or not they are up to date. You can also do a 'help' to get the options for PPM. If I've been clear as mud, let me know and I'll try to clear things up. Cheers! Brent -- Yeah, I'm a Delt.	[reply]
Re: Re: Differences between MAC and PC by cjf (Parson) on Mar 31, 2002 at 08:41 UTC
The first Perl book I ever read was the first edition of the book you mention. I'm still recovering. That said, looking briefy at the page you linked to it does mention the use of strict, cgi.pm, taint mode, and warnings. So perhaps the author has picked up a little Perl since writing the first edition and the second edition won't encourage such bad practices. There are of course safer alternatives when it comes to Perl books :).	[reply]