in reply to Need help understanding some code ...

 $value =~ tr/+/ /;
performs transliteration on $value and thus translates characters like !, @, #, etc. to their hex equivalents ... that is, # becomes %23.

No. Assuming there's any point to the code in the first place (see JavaFan's reply), the tr/// transliteration operator does limited character substitution.
     $value =~ tr/+/ /;
transliterates  + plus signs into spaces.

>perl -wMstrict -le "my $value = '!@#+&*'; $value =~ tr/+/ /; print qq{'$value'}; " '!@# &*'