Let me just say before asking this question, that I've spent HOURS combing CPAN and other postings on how to do this and have NOT found any examples of how to accomplish this other than references to the CGI::SESSION tutorials, which give highlights of the functions, but no SPECIFIC examples of accessing from ANOTHER page without create a new session. Therefore, I'm looking for those who have specific examples, NOT a cut-and-paste of a link I've surely visited in my quest to get, what I'm sure is basic, but not very clearly outlined in documentation.

Issue: I've got a log in page that presents the user with a standard user id and log in. Once the user is successfully authenticated against a MYSQL database, a user session is created with the following code: 
$session = new CGI::Session("driver:File", $cgi, {Directory=>"/temp"})
+;

$cookie = $cgi->cookie(-name=>'CGISESSID',-value=>$session->id);
$sid = $session->id();
print $cgi->header(-cookie=>$cookie );

    # storing data in the session
    $session->param('sessionid', $session->id);
    $session->save_param();
    # expire the session itself after 1 idle hour
    $session->expire('+1h');

[download]
This part works FINE. This issue I'm having is HOW to access the EXISTING session on another page. For example, I've include the following code at the top of another page that will check to see if a session has been initialized before proceeding with the displaying the page. However, it NEVER gets the session that has already been created, but, instead, creates nothing: 
use DBI;
use CGI;
use CGI::Session;

$session = CGI::Session->retrieve();
if ($session eq "")
{
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "<body>";
print "You must login first!";
exit;
print "</body>";
print "</html>";
}

[download]
I know this is simple to some of you, but I just can't seem to get this basic functionality working :-( EXAMPLES PLEASE????

In reply to accessing session variables across different pages by s/^Perl/pain/i

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