Is perl a good choice for CGI ?

xander has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I want to write code to interact with web pages using cgi scripts (a few fields to enter and a button to press for submitting). I've done a reasonable amount of C++ and Perl programming, but nothing internet related before. Any pointers to relevant help sources would be very appreciated, all I seem to be getting in my searches is how to do server side stuff, not how to automate the client side or interactions with the server.

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.

Comment on Is perl a good choice for CGI ?

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Re: Is perl a good choice for ... by swiftone (Curate) on Jun 05, 2000 at 18:57 UTC
The most classic answer is CGI.pm. This is a module that does most of the overhead of interacting with the web. Perl is perfect for CGI programming because such things are so often text-based (one of perl's strengths), require quick development (ditto), and flexibility (yup). I'd recommend you look at O'Reilly's CGI Programming with Perl as a starting point. It's pretty basic, but thorough. (CGI is used for receiving input from users, LWP for sending and requesting pages). If you need to parse a lot of HTML, check out HTML::Parser, and The Perl Journal article about it in the current issue. (pay subscription) (Article is recommended, because the HTML::Parser documentation assumes you know what it does and how)	[reply]
Re: Is perl a good choice for ... by infoninja (Friar) on Jun 06, 2000 at 19:24 UTC
I'd also highly reccomend Official Guide to Programming with CGI.pm by Lincoln Stein (the author of CGI.pm) -- it's come in very handy quite a few times.	[reply]
Re: Is perl a good choice for ... by antihec (Sexton) on Jun 05, 2000 at 18:46 UTC
look into the LWP:: things at CPAN (there's also Bundle::LWP or libwww)... HTH	[reply]
Re: Is perl a good choice for CGI ? by iceboxkid (Initiate) on Jun 03, 2002 at 04:04 UTC
perl still the best cgi language, most free website offer cgi using perl. So, just learn perl for cgi, PHP is good but still not the best. Originally posted as a Categorized Answer.	[reply]
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