To encode data in a URL, you can call CGI::escapeHTML() directly.

URL escaping is different from HTML escaping. I think the OP needs a module like URI::Escape. Observe the following code: 

$ perl
use CGI;
use URI::Escape;

my $orig = q{a9: _-;&<tag>'"};
printf "HTML escaped: %s\n", CGI->escapeHTML($orig);
printf "URL escaped:  %s\n", uri_escape($orig);
^D
HTML escaped: a9: _-;&amp;&lt;tag&gt;'&quot;
URL escaped:  a9%3A%20_-%3B%26%3Ctag%3E'%22

[download]

Most mainstream browser can recover from common broken (unescaped) urls - space seem to be the most common. But rfc2396 is clear in this regard: 

2.4.3. Excluded US-ASCII Characters

   Although they are disallowed within the URI syntax, we include here
+ a
   description of those US-ASCII characters that have been excluded an
+d
   the reasons for their exclusion.

   <SNIP>

   The space character is excluded because significant spaces may
   disappear and insignificant spaces may be introduced when URI are
   transcribed or typeset or subjected to the treatment of word-
   processing programs.  Whitespace is also used to delimit URI in man
+y
   contexts.

   space       = <US-ASCII coded character 20 hexadecimal>

   <SNIP>

   Data corresponding to excluded characters must be escaped in order 
+to
   be properly represented within a URI.

[download]

Named entities (like those generated by escapeHTML) are simply names for characters and do not represent URL escaping.

Test HTML snippet:

<a href="http://google.com/search?q=super search">unescaped space</a>
<a href="http://google.com/search?q=super%20search">escaped space</a>
<a href="http://google.com/search?q=super&amp;search">entity amp</a>
<a href="http://google.com/search?q=super%26search">url-escaped amp</a
+>

[download]

Attn. OP: Passing SQL statements this way is a security hole.

In reply to Re^2: passing data to other script via link by calin
in thread passing data to other script via link by kasmot

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