in reply to cgi programming...

Perl is thinking that your call to CGI::tr() is actually the perl transliteration operator tr///. Try calling it as &tr( ... ) instead and see if that doesn't clear things up. And see perldoc perlop for more on tr///.

Update: Or you could call the correct Tr as is mentioned below. See the section entitled NON-STANDARD HTML SHORTCUTS of perldoc CGI.