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To configure appache to use ActivePerl for CGI:

1. Edit your httpd.conf file. You can open this file by selecting
   Start | Programs | Apache HTTP Server | Configure Apache Server
   | Edit the Apache httpd.conf Configuration File which will open
   httpd.conf file in the notepad editor.
2. Search for "DocumentRoot". You should see a section that looks like this:
   

   # DocumentRoot: The directory out of which you will serve your
   # documents. By default, all requests are taken from this directory, but
   # symbolic links and aliases may be used to point to other locations.
   #
   DocumentRoot "C:/apacheroot"
   

3. Change the value of DocumentRoot to the actual local path to your web site.
   Make sure you use '/' forward slashes in the path. Apache doesn't understand
   '\' backward slashes in paths.
4. Just below the DocumentRoot section you will see the main directory section:
   

   Options FollowSymLinks
   AllowOverride None
   

   on the Option line, add "ExecCGI":

   Options FollowSymLinks ExecCGI
   

5. Search for the line:
   

   #AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
   

   Remove the '#' at the beginning to uncomment this line.

   AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
   

   If you want to use the .pl extension for your CGI scripts, change the extension
   so that the line looks like this:

   AddHandler cgi-script .pl
   

6. Save and close httpd.conf.

7. Restart the Apache service using the Apache Service
   Monitor.
8. Test your configuration by placing the following test script in your
   DocumentRoot directory as 'test.pl' (or test.cgi). Open the
   local URL http://localhost/test.pl in your browser.

   The test script:

   #!c:\perl\bin\perl.exe
   # ^^^ this must be the first line of the script! ^^^
   # start code
   
   use strict;
   use CGI;
   my $q = new CGI;
   
   # print header and start the markup output
   
   print $q->header( "text/html" ),$q->start_html( "hello from perl cgi!" );
   print $q->h2("Hello World!");
   print $q->end_html;
   # end code