That's not how CGI works, so it can't be done. You can potentially "pre-cache" some data in a Storable file, or in a database, or set up some environment variables.

If you want some kind of persistence, you will have to look into mod_perl or FastCGI.

• 200,000+ sessions/hour

• 2.5 million+ page views/hour

• 20,000+ orders/hour

The Apache HTTP server lets you define your own environment variables which are accessible from your CGI script just like the standard CGI variables.

No it doesn't, not from CGI, they don't persist, try it, I just did , it didn't work :)

#!/usr/bin/perl --
##
##  printenv -- demo CGI program which just prints its environment
##


print "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\n\n";


if( $ENV{QUERY_STRING} ){
    $ENV{OneTimeEnvTestWillItPersistProbablyNot}=1;
    print "so did OneTimeEnvTestWillItPersistProbablyNot persist? thou
+ght not\n\n\n";
} else {
    print "set OneTimeEnvTestWillItPersistProbablyNot=1\n";
    print "now append ?foo to the url to see if OneTimeEnvTestWillItPe
+rsistProbablyNot persists \n\n\n";
}

foreach $var (sort(keys(%ENV))) {
    $val = $ENV{$var};
    $val =~ s|\n|\\n|g;
    $val =~ s|"|\\"|g;
    print "${var}=\"${val}\"\n";
}
[download]

You cannot set (global) environment variables from within a CGI script. Please read this.

with mod_perl yes, with mod_cgi no