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Date: 2002/01/03 14:43

Q:
Being relatively new and ignorant to many facets of such things as Perl,
CGI and C+C I find I need some help. This is probably a basic laugher for
you but it has me a bit miffed.

I'm trying to download a script from bignosebird.com relating to mail
forms. I can copy & paste the script or unzip it, which is not a
problem....but....how do I then title the upload script to my site (I use
an FTP upload)

Do I assign an html, htm or other?

The script, as on bignose nite has a .pl at the end which I conclude is
perl? Do I save the unzip or pasted in Word using the .pl?

I have a cgi-bin directory in my site files so I know where it goes, but
not how to properly 'code' the file name. I almost think I can assign any
name as long as I link to whatever name I choose from the site page---is
this correct?

That's it for now. Thank you.
A:
The script is a text file. Thus you have to edit it using notepad, vi or
any other text editor to configure it. It will not work without some
changes.

If you have never ever programmed at all then you better ask someone to do
it for you, or learn a bit of programming. If you have some, even minimal
programming experience then you can edit BNB scripts even if you do not
know Perl. The hint is: edit only the lines that the comments tell you and
nothing else.

When you upload the file to a UNIX server, you should use FTP and you
should use ASCII transfer to have proper cr/lf line ending. If you upload
the file from another UNIX then this does not harm. But I assume that you
use some Windows or Mac on the client side.

The name on the UNIX server does not matter. If the server is NT then the
extension has to be .pl or .cgi or .whatever the system manager
configured. Most Windows NT servers run AcrivePerl from ActiveState. This
version of Perl automatically configures Microsoft IIS web server to
handle the extension .pl Therefore in case of a NT server trying a name
with extension .pl is a good choice. If it does not work, you can try .cgi
If that does not work either you should ask the system manager what is
going wrong.

However I am almost sure that you upload your script to a UNIX machine,
most probably Linux and presumably running Apache. In this case the only
thing that matters is that the first line of the script is

#! /usr/bin/perl

which it is actually when you download the script from BNB, and that the
script is copied into a cgi directory using text mode ftp.

You may need to set the permission which you can do if you happen to use a
graphical ftp client that supports that feature and if the ftp server
running on the UNIX also supports that.

Regards,
Peter

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