dosen't handle urls that use ; as the parameter separator, and it dosen't properly handle multiple values for one parameter name

Neither of those things is needful, generally, and since this is his own function, which he is using in his own scripts, he has complete control over whether the scripts use those esoteric features.

It also presents a huge backdoor

Yes, absolutely. Rather than assigning directly to global variables, he should be storing the input in a hash.

Furthermore, any query with the string *amp* in it

Indeed. See my obfuscated version above, which handles this correctly. (Its larger, unobfuscated prototype, the function I normally use, also handles some things that I stripped out for brevity, such as file uploads, but those things are not needed for most CGI scripts.)

There is a reason why people use CGI.pm or its lighter cousin, CGI::Lite

Yes, but as came up in a recent unrelated thread, there are also good reasons, especially for scripts that may be deployed in various locations under various circumstances, to avoid using any non-core modules (or, in fact, anything that hasn't been in core at least since 5.003). Also there are good reasons for generating all the HTML yourself, as it allows you to guarantee certain things about its structure. It is of course certainly possible to use a module for fetching the input and still generate the output yourself, however. 

$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$ ;->();print$/

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In reply to Re: the search string and me by jonadab
in thread the search string and me by deveyus

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