CGI Command line options

Specification

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 for a non-encoded + character to determine if the command line is to be used.

If the server finds one, it will decode the query information by first splitting it on the pluses given in the URL. It will then perform the additional decoding before placing the resulting words on argv[1....].

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 QUERY_STRING.

Examples

Examples of the command line usage are much better demonstrated than explained. For these examples, pay close attention to the script output which says what argc and argv are.

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Rob McCool robm@ncsa.uiuc.edu