The term "cookie" was derived from "magic cookie", which is the packet of data a program receives and sends again unchanged. Magic cookies were already used in computing when computer programmer Lou Montulli had the idea of using them in Web communications in June 1994. At the time, he was an employee of Netscape Communications, which was developing an e-commerce application for a customer.
A magic cookie or just cookie for short, is a token or short packet of data passed between communicating programs, where the data is typically not meaningful to the recipient program. The contents are opaque and not usually interpreted until the recipient passes the cookie data back to the sender or perhaps another program at a later time. The cookie is often used like a ticket — to identify a particular event or transaction.
The name "cookie" comes from a comparison to an unopened fortune cookie, because of the hidden information inside.
Last edited by Bud; 09-10-2011 at 06:28 PM..
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