One
of the oldest languages you can program in is CGI/Perl for
the internet.
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What is CGI? Perl?
CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is a very common word when web
hosting is mentioned. Frequently, but incorrectly, people usually
asked web hosting providers if they can run CGI scripts on
their accounts. What they are actually asking, albeit indirectly,
is if they can use CGI to run computer programs on their website.
CGI, in simple terms, is essentially an intermediary between
the a computer script and the web site. It operates to take the
information from the web page and pass it to a computer script
(program) and do whatever the computer program says to do. CGI
is not a computer language per se, but a common language for
different computer programs to interact with the web pages (hence
Common Gateway Interface).
One of the
recognized, and highly used, computer program languages which
uses CGI is Perl. Perl is a high level computer language
which can manipulate files, text and perform system operations
with ease. Perl scripts are highly used on the web and quite
frequently you hear about a very common perl script known as "formmail." A
formmail script is essentially a computer program written in
Perl which takes information from a web page and e-mails the
information to someone. This is accomplished when someone fills
out a form on a web page and presses a button. The button then
starts the computer program (formmail) which uses CGI to get
the information from the webpage and e-mails the information.
Perl scripts have been written to do quite a lot of things on
a web site and it is a very powerful language. But, it is not
the only computer language which can interact with a web page.
Some others are ASP, PHP, C, Python, etc.
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