Is there a Default array_name in perl for Text Brought in by Forms on the Web?

The method by which forms-input data is sent to a CGI script depends on whether the original HTML document specified delivery via the "POST" or "GET" method.

For POST--the newer, preferred method--the data is sent as additional input that your CGI program must read (from stdin); for the older GET method, the data is passed as additional arguments after a "?" at the end of the URL. The forms-input data is not automatically copied from either place into variables/arrays.

To get the data into variables/arrays, you can use any of several widely-available "CGI parsing" utilities/packages, or write the code yourself (not recommended because there are lots of potential security problems to watch for).

For perl programming, the simplest way to access the data is to include the following statement at the beginning of your Perl program:

use CGI qw(:standard);          # standard CGI functions

This will cause the Perl CGI routines which are already installed on NERSP to be callable from your program.

For information on using the Perl CGI routines, please see The Perl CGI Programming FAQ.