Removing "+" in $ENV{QUERY_STRING}

Hello List,

I am trying to build a webpage where I can enter hostname in a text box and up on hitting the key this searches multiple .csv files and prints them in the webpage itself. I am facing a problem with $ENV(QUERY_STRING} which take “+” when the textbox is entered with spaces in the beginning or end.

Tried to remove the starting and end spaces by
s/^\s+// and s/\s+$// .Nothing works for me here. Am I doing any thing wrong here?

Can any one help me in removing the “+” in the printed value? Because of this “+” in the variable my search does not work.

Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks
.