HTML World
The HTML World script is a slight modification of the Hello
World script, helloworld.cgi. This script creates an HTML-formatted
page with a black background and white text that says "Hello World!" in
<H2> header text.
Open a text editor to write the script:
pico htmlworld.cgi
Type the following Perl code in your text editor exactly as it appears
here:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
# Hello World script with HTML
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print '<HTML>';
print '<HEAD>';
print '<TITLE>HTML World</TITLE>';
print '</HEAD>';
print '<BODY BGCOLOR="black" TEXT="white">';
print '<H2>Hello World!</H2>';
print '</BODY>';
print '</HTML>';
Save the file and exit the editor.
Make the script executable, type:
chmod 755 $HOME/public_html/cgi-bin/htmlworld.cgi
This table includes a line-by-line explanation of htmlworld.cgi:
| #!/usr/local/bin/perl |
Tells the server the Perl interpreter is located in the directory
/usr/local/bin/perl. |
| # Hello World script with HTML |
Is a comment. |
| print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"; |
Is a print statement for the HTTP
header. In this case, the header tells the Web browser to display
HTML formatted text. Double
quotes are required in order to create two newline characters
with "\n\n". |
print '<HTML>';
print '<HEAD>';
print '<TITLE>HTML World</TITLE>';
print '</HEAD>';
|
These print statements start the HTML document and create the <HEAD>
section of the HTML page. |
print '<BODY BGCOLOR="black" TEXT="white">';
print '<H2>Hello World!</H2>';
print '</BODY>';
|
These print statements create the <BODY> section
of the HTML page with a black background and the words "Hello World!"
in white <H2> text. |
| print '</HTML>'; |
This print statement closes the HTML document. |
If everything ran properly, you should obtain a result similar
to this one. Experiment with various colors, text, etc.
| 
