$ perl -we 'use CGI; $url = "http://www.somedomain.com/index.cgi?page=home&var=1&no=2&so=forth&so=on"; print qq[<a href="], CGI::escapeHTML($url), qq[">description</a>\n];'
<a href="http://www.somedomain.com/index.cgi?page=home&amp;var=1&amp;no=2&amp;so=forth&amp;so=on">description</a>