Using ISINDEX searches

The <ISINDEX> tag generates an inline form at the point in the document at which the tag is inserted. In most browsers, use of the <ISINDEX> tag automatically includes several elements on the Web page including:

Leading and trailing horizontal rules as if the author had included two<HR> tags.
Text to the effect of "This is a searchable index. Enter search keywords:"
A text input box.

Here is an example of an <ISINDEX> tag.

Arguments are passed from the browser to the server script via the URL: arguments to be passed to the script are added to the end of the URL, delimited from the regular URL by a question mark(?) and then plus signs (+) between multiple words. To see an exmample of this, enter a string in the box above and press the <RETURN> key on your keyboard.

The program in this case must read the command line arguments instead of STDIN. The previous CGI script example could be used with the following modification.

Instead of reading STDIN, the program uses the command line argument to define a variable. To do this, you would replace the line

read (STDIN, $query, $ENV{CONTENT_LENGTH});

with the line

$searchstring = @ARGV;

Then, you can parse the $searchstring variable by splitting on plus signs (+).