CGI.pm is more or less the standard way of handling cgi in perl, at least if you're writing cgi scripts. I know some people would argue that it's a slow, horrible, piece of code, but for most tasks it's exactly what you need and it takes care of all the things that WILL go wrong if you try to roll your own solution. So, in reply to question 2, yes. No one ever got fired for using CGI.pm.

Cheers,
-- moodster