If you want to pass the entire contents of an XML file in the query string, the file had better be small. As the above posters said, you need to pass it as a string (not a data structure) and you should URL-encode the contents of the file.

Other possibilities include:

• If the target CGI can also access the XML file, just pass the filename, not the contents
• On the originating side, build the XML data into a hash. Then do something like this:

  my $params = join '&', map { "$_=" . uri_escape($hash{$_}) } keys %has
  +h;
  print q->redirect("http://foo/cgi-bin/bar.cgi?$params");
  [download]

  Be aware, though, that this will require that your keys be valid URI parameter names.