use Data::Dump; use CGI; my $q = CGI->new( q{?noampernoequal}); dd $q; dd $q->param; dd $q->keywords; $q->delete('keywords') if $q->keywords; dd $q->param; dd $q; __END__ bless({ ".charset" => "ISO-8859-1", ".fieldnames" => {}, ".parameters" => ["keywords"], "escape" => 1, "param" => { keywords => ["?noampernoequal"] }, "use_tempfile" => 1, }, "CGI") "keywords" "?noampernoequal" () bless({ ".charset" => "ISO-8859-1", ".fieldnames" => {}, ".parameters" => [], "escape" => 1, "param" => {}, "use_tempfile" => 1, }, "CGI")