the program i'm calling is url-escape aware, so it will work whether the string is escaped or not. and if i expected the username or password to contain anything unexpected, i could quote them: 
my $com = 'env QUERY_STRING=username="'.$uname.'"\;password="'.$pwd.'"
+ /usr/bin/custom_auth_tool';

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In reply to Re^2: blank string returned from piped command by EvanK
in thread blank string returned from piped command by EvanK

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