in reply to fake SSI

a=shift;$a=~s/\\//g;$a=glob($a);$_=`cat $a`;print"Content-type: text/h
+tml\n\n"
;while(/<!--#exec cgi="([^"]*)"-->/){$a=`$1`;$a=~s/\n/<br>\n/g;
s/<!--#exec cgi="([^"]*)"-->/$a/}print;

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Let's break that down. It appears that the first part is really meant to be: 

my $a= shift @ARGV;
$a =~ s#\\#/#g;
$a= glob($a);
$_= `cat $a`;

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which is just Win32-specific bad Perl for: $_= do { local($/); <> }; that is, take a file specified on the command line and read its contents into $_.

Now the next bit translates to: 

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
while(  /<!--#exec cgi="([^"]*)"-->/  ) {
    my $a= `$1`;
    $a =~ s/\n/<br>\n/g;
    s/<!--#exec cgi="([^"]*)"-->/$a/
}
print;

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which isn't so bad. A big unflexible, sure. If you aren't used to Perl's implicit $_, here is an alternate version: 
while(  $_ =~ /<!--#exec cgi="([^"]*)"-->/  ) {
    my $a= `$1`;
    $a =~ s/\n/<br>\n/g;
    $_ =~ s/<!--#exec cgi="([^"]*)"-->/$a/;
}
print $_;

[download]

Does that help?

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom