Value not being interpreted

[Milti]

I am using the GET command to retrieve customer info. When the customer name includes the ampersand, example Joe & Jane, the printout returned is only "Joe". Here is the GET call being used:

www.mysite.com/cgi-bin/customer_info_get.pl?f5=CID&f6=Joe & Jane

The cgi definitions are: $EID="$FORM{'f6'}"; and $customer ="$FORM{'f5'}"; The print command is: print "<font size=\"3\"><b>Customer Info For -- <font><font size=\"5\"><u>$EID</u></b></font>";

This print command does not return Joe & Jane, only Joe. However, if I change the code to print CINFO "<font size=\"3\"><b>Customer Info For -- <font><font size=\"5\"><u>Joe & Jane</u></b></font>" then Joe & Jane are printed out. It seems the command is correct. The question is why is the ampersand not being interpreted as part of the variable $EID.

<Any and all assistance will be appeciated.

Thanks for all the suggestions. The problem has been solved. Rather than asking the cgi program to "escape" the ampersand, it was removed from the GET query by changing f6=Joe & Jane to f6=Joe %26 Jane. That change results in Joe & Jane being printed.><Thanks again!>

[tangent]

As pointed out you need to escape the ampersand in 'Joe & Jane' but you do not want to escape the other ampersand in 'CID&f6'. Other characters may also need escaping so best to use a module:

use URI;

my $uri = URI->new('www.mysite.com/cgi-bin/customer_info_get.pl');
$uri->query_form(
    f5 => 'CID',
    f6 => 'Joe & Jane',
);
print "$uri";

Output:

www.mysite.com/cgi-bin/customer_info_get.pl?f5=CID&f6=Joe+%26+Jane

[LanX]

>  ?f5=CID&f6=Joe & Jane

& is a query delimiter, you are even explicitly using it as such. Consider URL-encoding it in the value for f6

[Anonymous Monk]

%FORM is a red flag, make sure youre using CGI param