Your question has already been adequately answered. However I feel the need to interject. please use CGI;. Any attempt to roll your own query string parser is (usually) wraught with peril. It doesn't make you a "lesser" developer to use the CGI module, it means you're smart enough to use what has been tested EXTENSIVELY and many monks rely on. There is nothing wrong at all with plopping open the CGI.pm file and trying to grok it, if you really wanna understand what's up with it.

Also

use strict; 
use warnings;
use CGI::Carp::FatalsToBrowser();
[download]

Check up on the CGI::Carp deal. strict and warnings will help prevent silly mistakes, and make your code more maintable (IMHO).

Again not trying to sound like a evangelist here, but I made the same mistakes when I started perl, and I wish someone had taken the time to tell me these things.