CGI::escape comes from CGI::Util and is not documented (the code is the documentation :-). It is used within CGI.pm and is usable outside, too.

#### from CGI/Util.pm
sub escape {
  shift() if ref($_[0]) || (defined $_[1] && $_[0] eq $CGI::DefaultCla
+ss);
  my $toencode = shift;
  return undef unless defined($toencode);
    $EBCDIC = "\t" ne "\011";
    if ($EBCDIC) {
      $toencode=~s/([^a-zA-Z0-9_.-])/uc sprintf("%%%02x",$E2A[ord($1)]
+)/eg;
    } else {
      $toencode=~s/([^a-zA-Z0-9_.-])/uc sprintf("%%%02x",ord($1))/eg;
    }
  return $toencode;
}
[download]

For more info see Dump a directory as links from CGI.

escapeHTML is fine to produce HTML, but not useful for URIs (your "&" is the best example). If we have an unescaped "&" then this is a parameter delimiter.

alex pleiner <alex@zeitform.de>
zeitform Internet Dienste

Thankyou! for (1..1000000);

Thankyou at two levels.

1) For taking the time to follow this up for me, and for the Dump-a-dir link. I really wish I had read this a week ago!!

2) For making me feel sane again. The very fact that someone of merlyn's stature says:

Getting the HTML and URI escaping right for creating links and labels is fun, not!

...makes feel better, cos it has taken me a week and the assistance of many good folks here to get this to work. I was really beginning to beleive that I was thick (which I may still be, but this isn't proof!:).

I guess that it was bad luck to pick this as my first try at Perl! Still hopefully I've learned stuff that I might not otherwise have done.

$EBCDIC = "\t" ne "\011";
Could someone explain this snippet of a snippet ? I've tried guessing using my limited knowledge of operator precedence.
I think i'm missing something obvious !