Editing Portal:SaaS and Web Development (section)

=== CGI.pm ===

The most important Perl module of the CGI era was '''CGI.pm''', written by Lincoln Stein. CGI.pm simplified the work of writing CGI scripts by providing a standard way to read parameters, handle form input, generate HTTP headers, manage cookies, and produce HTML output. The CGI.pm distribution is copyright 1995–2007 Lincoln D. Stein and is now maintained on CPAN.<ref>MetaCPAN, “CGI - Handle Common Gateway Interface requests and responses,” https://metacpan.org/pod/CGI, accessed July 3, 2026.</ref>

Before CGI.pm, many Perl web scripts used smaller libraries such as `cgi-lib.pl` or hand-written parsing code. CGI.pm helped standardize CGI programming in Perl and made it easier for non-specialists to build useful web applications.

CGI.pm became so important that for many people “Perl web programming” meant “CGI.pm programming.” A typical early Perl CGI script would load CGI.pm, read form parameters, perform some action, and print an HTML page. This was not always elegant by modern standards, but it was direct and effective.

CGI.pm’s historical importance is not that it represents the best way to write new web applications today. Its importance is that it made dynamic web programming accessible at a critical moment in the web’s growth.