Ahem, yes, HTTP::Request. Indeed, I updated all that I could lay my hands on, and yet the bug remained. It was only after I had exhausted this line of attack that I bit the bullet and upgraded to the next version of perl.

And the bug went away :)

print@_{sort keys %_},$/if%_=split//,'= & *a?b:e\f/h^h!j+n,o@o;r$s-t%t#u'