You could put all the link particulars in a module so that changes can be made in one place. Here is a Links.pm to give you ideas. It would be better to go a step further and have the module read a configuration file, but I didn't want to spoil all your fun.

If you only have a handful of links to maintain, a database may be overkill. By putting this in a module, you should be able to make the change from a config file to database with little, if any, change in the calling scripts.

#!/usr/bin/perl

  package Links;

  use strict;
  use CGI qw(:standard);

  my $Links = {

    musings => {
      text => 'Musings',
      link => '/cgi-bin/musing.cgi',
      id_list => [
        'musing_id',
      ],
    },

    rants => {
      text => 'Rants',
      link => '/cgi-bin/rants.cgi',
      id_list => [
        'rant_id',
        'ref_id',
      ],
    },

    stuff => {
      text => 'Other Stuff and Junk',
      link => '/cgi-bin/misc.cgi',
      id_list => [
      ],
    },
  };

#-----------------------------------------------------------
sub make {

  my $key  = shift;
  my $vals = shift;

  (defined($Links->{$key})) or return;

  my $info = $Links->{$key};

  my @id_list;

  for my $id (@{$info->{id_list}}) {
    if (defined($vals->{$id})) {
      push @id_list, "$id=$vals->{$id}";
    }
    else {
      # what if?
    }
  }

  my $url = $info->{link};

  if (@id_list) {
    my $id_str = join('&', @id_list);
    $url = "$url?$id_str";
  }

  return a({-href=>$url}, $info->{text});
}

1;
[download]

#!/usr/bin/perl

  use strict;
  use Links;

  my $vals = {
    musing_id => 42,
    rant_id   => 1,
    ref_id    => 2,
    foo_id    => 3,
  };

  my $link = Links::make('musings', $vals) or die;
  print "$link\n";

  my $link   = Links::make('rants', $vals) or die;
  print "$link\n";

  my $link  = Links::make('stuff', $vals) or die;
  print "$link\n";
[download]

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