Here's a little program that talks to the user:

my $foo = user_input("Enter foo:");
my $bar = user_input("Enter bar:");
print "foo x bar is " . $foo * $bar;
sub user_input {
    print shift;
    return chomp <>;
}
[download]

Now why can't I do that via http?

sub user_input_http {
    my $web_page = shift;

    # print HTTP header...

    print $web_page; # presumably with a form

    my %params = &parse_cgi_params; # or whatever
}
[download]

This offers big improvements over the normal CGI way, where you have to restart your application every time you send a web page, and then figure out the state of your program just from the parameters.

What does Perl offer for this? Is the Apache:: namespace any use? What about other programming languages - is this how e.g. Javabeans work?

I only ask.

dave hj~