Which resource is requested?

Thanks to the URL, the HTTP server knows if the navigator requests a document or a script execution. In fact, CGI scripts have specific extensions like .PL, .SH, .CGI . So the server can easily recognize them. Moreover sometimes, URL contains special directories like cgi-bin. They indicate the resource which is requested.

Example :

http://www.lecours.com/cgi-bin/what_news.cgi? When the server see the cgi-bin directory, it searches in the httpd.conf if this directory is associated with a special module. If it is the case, the http server gives control to this special module which will execute the resource.

Note :

CGI has evolved with the time : a lot of programmes written in JAVA (servlets), ... exchange parameters with http server thanks to the CGI environment variables.