use URI::Escape;
my $x = '%3Cb%3Eyo%3C%2Fb%3E';
print uri_unescape($x);
[download]

$string = "%3Cb%3Eyo%3C%2Fb%3E";\
$string =~ s/%([0-9A-Fa-f]{2})/chr(hex($1))/eg;
[download]

Worked!
should I be using CGI.pm rather then the code I presented?

Yes. No sense reinventing the wheel, especially incorrectly.

$string = "%3Cb%3Eyo%3C%2Fb%3E";
$string =~ s/+/ /sg;                 <---- You forgot this.
$string =~ s/%([0-9A-Fa-f]{2})/chr(hex($1))/seg;
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If you are using the CGI module then the URL-decoding of the query parameters will be done for you.

/J\

Or any of the more lightweight CGI related modules, such as CGI::Lite and CGI::Minimal.

show us the code that did it!

If you used CGI.pm as I'd recommend you, at least until you get everything working out the way you want to have it, then CGI.pm's param method would have converted your characters back to the original representation already.

Cheers, Sören

Here is the code I am using the grab my posted data. I got it from some book once upon a time, and have been using it since.


if ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq 'GET') {
        @pairs = split(/&/, $ENV{'QUERY_STRING'});
} elsif ($ENV{'REQUEST_METHOD'} eq 'POST') {
        read (STDIN, $buffer, $ENV{'CONTENT_LENGTH'});
        @pairs = split(/&/, $buffer);
} else {
        print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
        print "<P>Use Post or Get";
}

foreach $pair (@pairs) {
        ($key, $value) = split (/=/, $pair);
        $key =~ tr/+/ /;
        $key =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9] [a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;
        $value =~ tr/+/ /;
        $value =~ s/%([a-fA-F0-9] [a-fA-F0-9])/pack("C", hex($1))/eg;

        $value =~s/<!--(.|\n)*-->//g;

        if ($formdata{$key}) {
                $formdata{$key} .= ", $value";
        } else {
                $formdata{$key} = $value;
        }
}

$yip = $ENV{'REMOTE_ADDR'};
$link = $formdata{'link'};
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Link then prints out the bad link above.

While I've seen worse form data parsers, this one doesn't handle multivalues and probably has security issues (although I don't remember why at the moment of this writing).

You can avoid this and a lot of cut+paste by using CGI; the following code replaces the one in your post, gaining named features and not losing anything:

use CGI;                          # use the CGI.pm module
my $query = CGI->new;             # create a CGI object called "$query
+"

            # if you actually need all form data in a hash,
            # do this:
my %formdata = $query->Vars;      # get all form data in hash "%formda
+ta".

            # does handle multivalues, although not too well;
            # see the CGI manual on "multivalue" for more on that topi
+c.

my $yip = $query->remote_host;    # get the remote hostname or address

# my $link = $formdata{link};     # one way of getting the link parame
+ter.
my $link = $query->param('link'); # another way of getting the link pa
+rameter.
[download]

Cheers, Sören