I have a web site under construction that makes use of a cookie-based session system via by server side includes. For example, the index.shtml file calls a 'links' sidebar where authenticated users can set their own personal bookmark links, much like the personal nodelet on this site, whereas non-authenticated users are displayed a login form.

The index.shtml server-side include looks like this:

<!--#include virtual="/cgi-bin/links.cgi" -->
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Where the corresponding display_links dispatch subroutine of the links.cgi code, which uses CGI::Application, looks similar to this (cut a little for brevity):

sub display_links {
    my $self = shift;
    my $cgi = $self->query;
    my $xml = $self->param('xml');
    my %auth = $cgi->cookie(
        -name   =>  'cowsnet-auth',
        -path   =>  '/'
    );
    my $html;
    if (scalar keys %auth) {
        my $prefs = eval {
            my @user = grep { $_->{'username'} eq $auth{'username'} } 
+@{%{$xml}->{'user'}};
            return shift @user;
        };
        $html = $self->load_tmpl("authenticated.tmpl");
        if (exists $prefs->{'links'}) {
            my @links;
            push (@links, {
                'href' =>  eval {
                    my $uri = URI->new($_->{'href'});
                    $uri->canonical->as_string;
                }
            }) foreach @{$prefs->{'links'}};
            $html->param(
                'links' =>  \@links
            );
        }
    } else {
        $html = $self->load_tmpl("default.tmpl");
    }
    return $html->output;
}
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This works like a charm - In order to set cookies with this system however I do still resort to calling a CGI directly which redirects through to 'authentication' page.

perl -e 's&&rob@cowsnet.com.au&&&split/[@.]/&&s&.com.&_&&&print'

20060730 Unconsidered by Corion: Consideration impossible. Was considered by jdporter: reparent to its proper parent, Answer: Cookies and Exec Cgi. Not sure how it ended up in the wrong place...