It's quite strange, and does seem like a bug. I don't have access to a newer version of CGI just now, so not sure if it's been fixed (no reference to it in the change log). But I did find a workaround for anyone who's interested: 
>perl -e 'use CGI; print $CGI::VERSION;'
3.15
>perl -e "use CGI; print CGI::start_form({enctype=>'test'});" # Seems 
+broken
<form method="post" action="" enctype="multipart/form-data" enctype="t
+est">
>perl -e "use CGI ( -no_xhtml ); print CGI::start_form({enctype=>'test
+'});" # A non-ideal solution
<form method="post" action="" enctype="test">
>perl -e "use CGI; print CGI::startform({enctype=>'test'});" # Don't k
+now why it works, but it does...
<form method="post" action="" enctype="test">

[download]
Note that startform() is documented as an alias of start_form(), and the source code does seem to support that. I also got the same results with v3.11

In reply to Re: enctype problem in CGI by thewebsi
in thread enctype problem in CGI by macPerl

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