Passing a hash from a form field?

[email protected]
Newsgroups perl.beginners.cgi
Message-ID <[email protected]>
I have several instances where I would like to pass a hash (or a hash 
reference) in a hidden form field to a subroutine within the same script 
upon submitting the form.

So far all my attempts have failed. I'm not even sure if this is 
possible. I know about passing named parameters and references but that 
only seems to work if the subroutine is called directly, not due to a 
form submission. Does anyone know if this is even possible, and if so, 
some direction I can take?

#! /usr/bin/perl
BEGIN
{
	open (STDERR,">>$0-err.txt");
	print STDERR "\n",scalar localtime,"\n";
}

use strict;
use warnings;
use CGI ':standard';

my %Categories =(
	1 => "Exterior",
	2 => "Interior",
	3 => "Audio",
	4 => "Vehicles",
	5 => "Packages"
	);
my $form_url= url();

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

my $MODE=param('Mode');
{
	no strict;
	$MODE="PageOne" unless $MODE; # default sub to execute
	&$MODE; # else execute this
}
##############################################
sub PageOne
{
print "<html><body>";

foreach my $k ( sort keys %Categories)
{
	print "[$k] => $Categories{$k}<br>";
}

print <<EndHTML;
<form method="post" action="$form_url">
<input type="hidden" name="Categories" value="%Categories">
<input type="hidden" name="Mode" value="ReadCat">
<input type="submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>
EndHTML
}
##################################################
sub ReadCat
{
	my %Cats = param('Categories');
	print "<html><body>";
	foreach my $k (keys %Cats)
	{
		print "[$k] => $Cats{$k}<br>\n";
	}
	print "</body></html>\n";
}
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