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- <html><head><title>CGI Command line options</title></head><body><h1><img alt="" src="cl_files/CGIlogo.gif"> CGI Command line options</h1>
- <hr> <p>
- </p><h2>Specification</h2>
- The command line is only used in the case of an ISINDEX query. It is
- not used in the case of an HTML form or any as yet undefined query
- type. The server should search the query information (the <code>QUERY_STRING</code> environment variable) for a non-encoded
- = character to determine if the command line is to be used, if it
- finds one, the command line is not to be used. This trusts the clients
- to encode the = sign in ISINDEX queries, a practice which was
- considered safe at the time of the design of this specification. <p>
- For example, use the <a href="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/finger">finger script</a> and the ISINDEX interface to look up "httpd". You will see that the script will call itself with <code>/cgi-bin/finger?httpd</code> and will actually execute "finger httpd" on the command line and output the results to you.
- </p><p>
- If the server does find a "=" in the <code>QUERY_STRING</code>,
- then the command line will not be used, and no decoding will be
- performed. The query then remains intact for processing by an
- appropriate FORM submission decoder.
- Again, as an example, use <a href="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/finger?httpd=name">this hyperlink</a> to submit <code>"httpd=name"</code> to the finger script. Since this <code>QUERY_STRING</code>
- contained an unencoded "=", nothing was decoded, the script didn't know
- it was being submitted a valid query, and just gave you the default
- finger form.
- </p><p>
- If the server finds that it cannot send the string due to internal
- limitations (such as exec() or /bin/sh command line restrictions) the
- server should include NO command line information and provide the
- non-decoded query information in the environment
- variable <a href="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/env.html#query"><code>QUERY_STRING</code></a>. </p><p>
- </p><hr>
- <h2>Examples</h2>
- Examples of the command line usage are much better <a href="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/examples.html">demonstrated</a> than explained. For these
- examples, pay close attention to the script output which says what
- argc and argv are. <p>
- </p><hr>
- <a href="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/interface.html"><img alt="[Back]" src="cl_files/back.gif">Return to the
- interface specification</a> <p>
- CGI - Common Gateway Interface
- </p><address><a href="http://hoohoo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/cgi/mailtocgi.html">cgi@ncsa.uiuc.edu</a></address>
- </body></html>
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