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Command line arguments

There is only one situation where inputs to the CGI script are passed via the command line, and that is the case of a query string that does not contain equals signs. In this case the server splits the query string into its component words as delimited by plus signs, decodes any url-encoded data within the words, and places them into successive elements of the argument vector of the CGI script. The first word of the query string will be in the first element of the argument vector after the script command name (which will be in element zero).

If the length of the query string exceeds the maximum length of a command line or exceeds some other restriction, the server will not place any values into the argument vector. The query string contents are always passed, without decoding or splitting into words, in the QUERY_STRING environment variable.

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.