Hi there!

OK, of course, what you are asking for is:

# a hash (most important data type!)

# ASP code
# if session(strname)="" then
#     session(strname) = 0
# end if

my %session = give_me_my_session( $this_is_who_i_am );

if ( not exists $session{$strname}
     or $session{$strname} eq '' )
{
    $sesssion{$strname} = 0;
}
[download]

Of course, the trick is those give_me_...() and $this_is_... A nice trick if you are using Apache with mod_perl is using Apache::ASP. It gives you a complete ASP environment to program in Perl. It's almost a one-by-one map of ASP objects, thus translating an ASP to a Perl script could almost be done automatically (add sigils where they correspond, change . for -> in ASP objects method calls, and the VB or JS constructs to Perl ones.

By the way, if you can start from scratch, your script will be much cleaner and idiomatic (if you're good at Perl), and you can actually leave the whole ASP mess out and use CGI::Session as suggested by another monk.

If you rather not start all over, Apache::ASP can come very handy (get it from CPAN, of course).

Good luck,

--
our $Perl6 is Fantastic;