Fellow Monks, I have an interesting situation with a CGI parameter. I am somewhat convinced it's a character set issue, but not sure what the resolution is. It appears that param is having an issue unencoding the parameter.

I can see in the raw query_string that the encoded string is passing in OK, but when I yank that parm out via CGI->param it's getting hosed. I'd rather not just parse the query_string myself if I don't have to.

Any thoughts on this? I am on an AIX box using Websphere.

given this URL parameter: 

/cgi-bin/sidtest?sid=%32%2D%9F%A5%54%12%23%AA%C8%C7%CF%CE%8E%AC

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and this code: 
#!/ots/perl/bin/perl
$|++;
use strict;

use CGI;

my $q = new CGI;

my $sid = $q->param("sid"); 

print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n";
print "\nsid is: $sid\n";
print "\nsid escaped is: " . $q->escape($sid);
print "\nsid unescaped is: " . $q->unescape($sid);
print "\nENV{QUERY_STRING} is: " .  $ENV{QUERY_STRING};

exit;

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I am getting this: 
sid is: 2-Ÿ¥T#ªÈÇÏÎŽ¬

sid escaped is: 2-%9F%A5T%12%23%AA%C8%C7%CF%CE%8E%AC
sid unescaped is: 2-Ÿ¥T#ªÈÇÏÎŽ¬
ENV{QUERY_STRING} is: sid=%32%2D%9F%A5%54%12%23%AA%C8%C7%CF%CE%8E%AC

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note that if I execute from the command line, I am seeing similar behavior: 
gen31$ ./sidtest sid=%32%2D%9F%A5%54%12%23%AA%C8%C7%CF%CE%8E%AC
Content-type: text/plain


sid is: 2-¥T#ªÈÇÏά

sid escaped is: 2-%9F%A5T%12%23%AA%C8%C7%CF%CE%8E%AC
sid unescaped is: 2-¥T#ªÈÇÏά
ENV{QUERY_STRING} is:

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Any thoughts/clues are most welcome, especially if I am just being a dumbass and not seeing the obvious.

In reply to CGI param character strangeness by wardk

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