It sounds like a timing thing to me. At the time the script is compiled, there is no cookie data available. After it runs the first time, the client browser now holds valid cookie data which is passed to the script on the second try. You might try forking a new process after setting the cookie and placing your print statement within the child. Silly me. That won't work since the fork just copies what you had at pre-compile.

So you're left with something like:

#! Perl -w
use CGI;
use strict;
my $query = new CGI;

 my $spcName = $query->cookie(-name=>'spcName', -value=>$query->url_pa
+ram('test'));
  print $query->header(-cookie=>[$spcName]);
  print "cookie value: ", $query->cookie(-name=>'spcName'), "<BR>";
 my $savedVal = $query->cookie(-name=>'spcName') | $query->url_param('
+test');
print $savedVal;
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