http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=823440

Chuma has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm trying to get my CGI program to send certain information when you click on a link. It has to set a couple of variables, and then submit the information to the next CGI script. The only way I know of is by using Javascript, in this awfully messy way:
print ' <form name="theform" action="page2.cgi" method="post"> <input type=hidden name=x> <input type=hidden name=y> </form> <a href=javascript:document.theform.x.value=5; javascript:document.theform.y.value=7; javascript:document.theform.submit();> hello<\/a> ';
Is there a cleverer way to do this?
I also, if you pardon the heresy, tried doing it with PHP and session variables, but I couldn't figure out any way to get that working either.