SAVING THE STATE OF THE FORM TO A FILE: 

    $query->save(FILEHANDLE)

This will write the current state of the form to the provided filehandle. You can read it back in by providing a filehandle to the new method. Note that the filehandle can be a file, a pipe, or whatever!

The format of the saved file is: 

	NAME1=VALUE1
	NAME1=VALUE1'
	NAME2=VALUE2
	NAME3=VALUE3
	=

Both name and value are URL escaped. Multi-valued CGI parameters are represented as repeated names. A session record is delimited by a single = symbol. You can write out multiple records and read them back in with several calls to new. You can do this across several sessions by opening the file in append mode, allowing you to create primitive guest books, or to keep a history of users' queries. Here's a short example of creating multiple session records: 

   use CGI;


   open (OUT,">>test.out") || die;
   $records = 5;
   foreach (0..$records) {
       my $q = new CGI;
       $q->param(-name=>'counter',-value=>$_);
       $q->save(OUT);
   }
   close OUT;


   # reopen for reading
   open (IN,"test.out") || die;
   while (!eof(IN)) {
       my $q = new CGI(IN);
       print $q->param('counter'),"\n";
   }

The file format used for save/restore is identical to that used by the Whitehead Genome Center's data exchange format ``Boulderio'', and can be manipulated and even databased using Boulderio utilities. See http://www.genome.wi.mit.edu/genome_software/other/boulder.html

for further details.