read (STDIN, $query, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
$query .= '&cmd=_notify-validate';

# set up connection and do the request
my $socket = IO::Socket::INET->new( 'www.webserver.com:80' ) or die;
print $socket "GET /cgi-bin/webscr?$query HTTP/1.0\n\n";

# check return status
my $status = <$socket>;
die "Unacceptable status: $status" unless $status =~ /200/;

# lose the HTTP header
while (<$socket>) {
    last if /^\s+$/s;
}

# get the body
while (<$socket>) {
    $res .= $_;
}
[download]

I would have to first load IO::Socket::INET, right? would this be:

use IO::Socket::INET;
[download]

use IO::Socket;
[download]

should be enough, I believe.

Liz

From perldoc ExtUtils::MakeMaker:

The quickest way to install a module in a non-standard place might be

   perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=~

This will install all files in the module under your home directory, with man pages and libraries going into an appropriate place (usually ~/man and ~/lib).

So if you have shell access, you can use whatever modules you like.

Even without shell access, you can often install modules. I frequently write short shell scripts, upload them into my Web hoster's cgi-bin directory, then use them to compile and install my Perl modules:

#!/bin/bash -x

printf "Content-type: text/plain\n\n"
exec 2>&1

H=/home/virtual/site199/fst/home/suspectclass
export PERL5LIB=$H/lib/perl5
MOD=Email-Valid-0.14

cd $H/src
tar xvzf "$MOD.tar.gz"
cd "$MOD"
make clean
perl Makefile.PL LIB=$H/lib/perl5 && 
  make && 
  make test && 
  make install

I just set H to my home directory (which I often get by running a shell script that just does pwd, since I may be chroot'd when I FTP in), then browse to the CGI script. On Mozilla at least, the lines come across in real time.

Setting PREFIX may work even better than just setting LIB, but I haven't tried it (I will next time).

Just be careful after you do so to remove them again. (Allowing people to run arbitrary shell scripts is a security hole.)

UPDATE: bobn is right. The above script does not allow someone to run arbitrary code. This reply was just a knee-jerk response to seeing someone doing administration through running shell scripts in cgi-bin.

I figured out that the module I need to LWP::UserAgent is libwww-perl-5.69.tar.gz

Now, do I need to put anything into /lib/perl5 ?

sorry, no shell access :-(