So far in experience I've ran CGI scripts from links and buttons and from placing absolute URLS directly into the Address bar on the browser. I'd like to be able to call a CGI script and have it return a value without redirecting the browser.

You can execute CGI scripts at the command line. No browser needed. You can also use CGI.pm's offline mode for debugging. See: http://stein.cshl.org/WWW/software/CGI/#debugging

But, of course, this doesn't answer your real question:
I'd like to be able to load new content into a page without reloading the entire page.

You might be interested in inline frames. But I doubt it.

Can this be done with CGI?

CGI scripts are server-side applications. So the short answer is no. But this can be accomplished with JavaScript. What you are interested in is DHTML.

In reply to Re: Running CGI Scripts without redirecting the browser by jacques
in thread Running CGI Scripts without redirecting the browser by Petras

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