That depends on who has access through the server configuration and .htaccess . I usually keep a development tree, and never depend on the production side to provide the source.

If I need to repair an installation, I require a baseline of all site files with md5sums to immunize me from blame for things I didn't do.

To provide a source url for a site file, just provide a sub in the admin area to read the file and print it to you with the correct file name and Content-Type.

(Added) Btw, I don't see what this has to do with local drives.

After Compline,
Zaxo

I'm not sure what it is you really want to do, but have you thought about setting up an ftp function to get the file when a button on your form is pressed

Although this is not related to local drives...

Or could it be that when you press a button and you really want the .cgi script to run, your browser asks you if you would like to download the file..???

This normally happens, if I remember correctly, when your web server hasn't been setup to execute .cgi files properly

I presume you mean like a view-source option for the script itself? Well, if it is just for scripts you could do something like:

use CGI;
my $q=new CGI;
print $q->header("application/x-perl").`cat $0`;
[download]

Whereas if you're talking about *any* file (eg image files etc) you need to do a bit of juggling with mime types, and of course there's the whole attachment/filename issue also. Something like this would do for that:

use CGI;
my $q=new CGI;
my $filename=$q->param("some.param.name");
die "I won't display the file: $filename" unless some_test_or_other($f
+ilename);
print $q->header(-type=>`file -bi $filename`."; file=$filename",
   -content_dispostion=>"attachment; filename='$filename'").
   `cat $filename`;
[download]

WARNING: Be very very careful if you do something like this. File-download scripts are responsible for a great many web site security holes, so unless you intend to impliment really anal input checking, don't even consider doing a (named) file download script as described above.

Also please note that using - and trusting - 'cat' and 'file' to do work for you is both inefficient and potentially insecure. They're included in these examples for brevity, in any real environment you should generally use a self-written function or CPAN module as appropriate.

Heh. Useless use of cat and backticks. Use seek to rewind DATA to position zero.