Looking for some help with http problem

["James A. Treacy" <treacy@debian.org>]

Someone on this list must know enough about http to help with
the following. The problem basically has to do with encoding of
urls, in particular '+' -> '%2B'.

I'll use an example to show the problem. If you visit
http://packages.debian.org/g++ you are supposed to be
redirected to
http://cgi.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=g%2B%2B&searchon=names&version=all&release=all
but no matter whether you specify g++ or g%2B%2B in
the initial url, the final url contains g++. Then when
the variable keywords is read into the cgi script it
contains the value 'g  '.

If you go directly to
http://cgi.debian.org/cgi-bin/search_packages.pl?keywords=g%2B%2B&searchon=names&version=all&release=all
everything works properly.

Is the problem here that the redirect should use the encoded
url, or that the cgi script should receive the '+' when the
variable is read in? The script is in perl using the CGI module.

-- 
James (Jay) Treacy
treacy@debian.org