You don't need to load all of CGI to do this if you are taking the whole QUERY_STRING as a single value. You can use URI:Escape directly. It is an extremely lightweight module. You'll want to use uri_unescape, like so: 
    use URI::Escape qw(uri_unescape);
    my $query_string = uri_unescape $ENV{QUERY_STRING};

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In reply to Re^2: Can the "#" character be passed via $ENV{QUERY_STRING} ? by mdillon
in thread Can the "#" character be passed via $ENV{QUERY_STRING} ? by Hagbone

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