URL encoding in bash

perl_urlencode.sh

#!/bin/bash
function urlencode() {
	echo -n "$1" | perl -MURI::Escape -ne 'print uri_escape($_)'
}

urlencode.sh

#!/bin/bash
## borrowed from http://blog.famzah.net/2011/08/25/url-escape-in-bash/
## Original file http://www.famzah.net/download/bash_urlencode/escape.sh.txt

set -u

declare -A ord_hash # associative hash; requires Bash version 4

function init_urlencode() {
	# this is the whole ASCII set, without the chr(0) and chr(255) characters
	ASCII='
	

 !"#$%&'\''()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~€‚ƒ„…†‡ˆ‰Š‹ŒŽ‘’“”•–—˜™š›œžŸ ¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬­®¯°±²³´µ¶·¸¹º»¼½¾¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþ'

	# chr(0) cannot be stored in a Bash variable

	local idx
	for idx in {0..253}; do # 0..253 = 254 elements = length($ASCII)
		local c="${ASCII:$idx:1}" # VERY SLOW
		local store_idx=$(($idx+1))
		ord_hash["$c"]="$store_idx"
		# chr(255) cannot be used as a key
	done
}

function urlencode() {
	local inp="$1"
	local len="${#inp}"
	local n=0
	local val
	while [ "$n" -lt "$len" ]; do
		local c="${inp:$n:1}" # VERY SLOW
		if [ "$c" == "ÿ" ]; then # chr(255) cannot be used as a key
			val=255
		else
			val="${ord_hash[$c]}"
		fi
		printf '%%%02X' "$val"
		n=$((n+1))
	done
}

init_urlencode # call only once
urlencode 'some^fancy#text'

Nice. Love the perl solution.
What about decoding?