Perl is a language optimized for scanning text files, extracting information, and printing reports based on that information. It's also a pritty good language for many linux and unix system management tasks, like Bash. but this artical will focus on what Perl has become for the internet. CGI or Common Gateway Interface allows this scripting lanuage to interface with webpages and produce server side suport for generating web pages.

You'll find most Websites suport perl, it's usualy in the form or a Perl Modual that plugs into an Apache Webserver, The webserver usualy just sits there and provides HTML pages and other content to flow to a user from the server. But when you plug perl into it, the Webserver will send any cgi scripts first to the perl interpriter and then return the output of the perl interpriter as the HTML page.

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