CGI.pm can be somewhat tricky when you are trying to get the parameters from both GET and POST methods. The url_param instead of param will get the parameters from the url line. However, I have found that CGI.pm can still be somewhat mischivious when trying to get the values from the param function especially when dealing with both the GET and POST methods. So here is my suggestion. Parse the query string yourself. The client will send an environment variable called QUERY_STRING. So try to get it this way: (Assuming you only have ?action=additem in the query string) 
my $query_srting = $ENV{QUERY_SRING};
my ( $query, $action ) = split /=/, $query_string;

[download]
This should put "additem" in your $action . Good Luck!

Update: Thanks to tilly and Ovid for your suggestions. Seems that I still have a long way to go to get this perl thing down. Anyway, I agree that rolling on your own can be much harder than really understanding how CGI.pm works and forgeting the little details such as the difference between POST and GET. Thanks to you guys I am going back and revising my CGI code. :)

Ovid wrote:

but the "roll your own" parsing that kha0z suggested is terribly broken.

Please enlighten me. I don't see where the "broken" part is.

Thanks.

Another Update:Thanks again for your help Ovid. :)

kha0z -- www.kha0z.net

In reply to Re: "Action" variables and form data by kha0z
in thread "Action" variables and form data by mothra

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