But that was exactly my problem: If I called

/cgi-bin/script.pl

(i.e. without any parameters and without query string), CGI.pm behaved like if I had called

/cgi-bin/script.pl?keywords=

I should have mentioned that my application in this case needed to get the parameters from the query string only (GET parameters) and that it should not get the POST parameters. Thus, I was using

$q -> url_params

instead of

$q -> param

Perhaps that's the reason for the misbehavior. Furthermore, I have seen some more misbehavior (see post below), so I dumped CGI.pm; I am now parsing the query string myself.

Regards,

Nocturnus