Greetings again wizards of the web,

I have just migrated all of my forms over to use the CGI lib. Several of them work in the following manner: form 'A' -> script 'B' onclick list element -> form 'C'.

For clarification hers is an example. Search for all servers in Texas (form A) yields 30 servers in a list (script B). When one of these servers is clicked form C is displayed which shows the selected server information which can be edited by an admin.

Now the problem. Form C will have defaults for most all fields that are not in use. This means that in order to populate the form elements with the values from my SQL table, I need to pass them through CGI headers. That would not be a problem if I weren't using tab functions that allow users to navigate back and forth from one site to another.

I noticed that I can use the unescape() utility in the following fashion:
$ENV{QUERY_STRING}=unescape($ENV{QUERY_STRING});  #--Needed for form element population.
This actual populates the elements with the correct value when the invoking script escapes a URL string to allow for textarea formatting.

First question: How many thousands of things can go wrong by altering $ENV{QUERY_STRING}?

Second Question: If it is okay to use the above statement then I can effectively populate the form elements by creating a string from my table query and setting it to $ENV{QUERY_STRING}. Otherwise Is there a function in the CGI lib that I overlooked that accommodates both element default values and element values?

In reply to CGI lib question by hok_si_la

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