As an aside (not related to your merging question), you could use CGI, or CGI::Simple for the query parameter splitting... E.g.

use CGI::Simple;

my $q = CGI::Simple->new();
my %FORM = $q->Vars;
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Or, with immediate input:

my $q = CGI::Simple->new( 'output1=on&output2=on&output3=on&announceme
+nt=test' );
my %FORM = $q->Vars;

print "$_ = $FORM{$_}\n" for sort keys %FORM;

__END__
announcement = test
output1 = on
output2 = on
output3 = on
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