This is a defect of Internet Explorer. I would complain to Microsoft about this, but I think they've stated pretty clearly that they have no intention of fixing the problem.

The thing is, text/plain is too generic for IE to like, so it assumes the web server doesn't quite know what it's talking about issuing a MIME type like that and attempts to do its own thing to figure out what the content actually is. Since it fails to find any thing special about it, but the URL has a .cgi extension, it shrugs its shoulders and tries to download it as a .cgi file. Since it has no idea what a .cgi file is, it asks you what you want to do with it.

The solution would be for your script to posts its results to, say, b.cgi/results.txt instead. The /results.txt will be passed to your script via the 'path_info' method but will otherwise be ignored (your script will behave as it did before). IE will see the "filename" and say, "Hey, it really is a text file!" and display it as you expect.

In reply to Re: Problem calling a script which outputs plain text by Fastolfe
in thread Problem calling a script which outputs plain text by Baz

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