For question No. 3:

I use something like that to read and write cookies:

use CGI;
my $q = new CGI;

# read cookie
my %cookies = $q->cookie(-name => "test_foo");
my $bar = $cookies{bar};
my $foo  = $cookies{foo};

# write cookie
my $cookie = $q->cookie(-name    => "test_foo",
                        -value   => {
                                     foo  => "foo",
                                     bar  => "bar",
                                    },
                        -expires => '+10m');

print $q->header(-cookie=>$cookie, -expires => "now");
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alex pleiner <alex@zeitform.de>
zeitform Internet Dienste