That last section probably got you wondering where to find your files on Tripod's servers. That's one of the most significant ways in which Tripod differs from other CGI services; all member-CGI scripts run on a special server named "cgi.tripod.com." While your scripts are running, the CGI server doesn't contact any other server on Tripod. This means a few things:

• Since the CGI server won't contact any other servers on Tripod, any HTML file your script needs to access has to be in your cgi-bin.


• The URL of any file located in your cgi-bin while your script is running is: http://cgi.tripod.com/your_membername/cgi-bin/filename.


• The absolute system location of files in your cgi-bin is the same as the root directory. Directories are structured like trees -- they start at the root and branch out from there. The name of a file in the root directory is just the file name itself, while the name of a file in a subdirectory must include that subdirectory name. This is a simple directory structure:
  

The root of this directory is "cgi.tripod.com"; if you need to find, for example, the Guestbook that goes with this root, you'll find it at: /yourmembername/cgi-bin/guestbook.html. That's the way a directory structure normally works. The difference with Tripod's CGI server is that while a CGI script is running, it considers your cgi-bin to be the root directory. If you then need the system location of one of your files, it would be just the file name. The system location of the guestbook.html file in this example would be "guestbook.html" while the CGI script was running.