What you're talking about is referencing a CGI as the result of an ISINDEX search as opposed to invoking it via a parameter list. CGI plays quite happily either way. From the CGI docs:
FETCHING A LIST OF KEYWORDS FROM THE QUERY: 
@keywords = $query->keywords

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If the script was invoked as the result of an <ISINDEX> search, the parsed keywords can be obtained as an array using the keywords() method.

FETCHING THE NAMES OF ALL THE PARAMETERS PASSED TO YOUR SCRIPT: 

@names = $query->param

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If the script was invoked with a parameter list (e.g. ``name1=value1&name2=value2&name3=value3''), the param() method will return the parameter names as a list. If the script was invoked as an <ISINDEX> script and contains a string without ampersands (e.g. ``value1+value2+value3'') , there will be a single parameter named ``keywords'' containing the ``+''-delimited keywords.

Gary Blackburn
Trained Killer

In reply to Re: Clean URLs and CGI.pm by Trimbach
in thread Clean URLs and CGI.pm by swiftone

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