In its simplest form it serves files from a directory tree: the request "GET /hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html" returns that file. The server may also run a script to answer a search: an index document tells the browser that it may be searched, and the keywords typed by the reader are passed to the script, which returns a new document with the results.
A server may also be a gateway to an existing database, a help system or a phone book: it translates each request into a query and the result into HTML.
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