Ampersand (&) woes

[alexwren]

Hi,

Tearing my hair out trying to suss this and decided that it is time to ask an expert *beg*.

So I have hardcoded an advanced search that contains an ampersand as part of the search string. When I replace it with a ' & # 3 8 ;' (spaced intentionally so that your browser doesnt turn it into a '&') and test it manually in the browser (by pasting into the url field) all works well.

Now when I pop that code onto a page in Actinic somehow evil gremlins turn it back into an ampersand '&' and I get a lovely Actinic error

Error: Bad input string "RANDOM=NETQUOTEVAR%3ARANDOM&PAGE=SEARCH&SS=&TB=A&PR=-1&S_REGION0_0=France+-+Bordeaux+-+Listrac+&+Moulis&GB=A&ACTION=Search". Argument count 16.

I know why, it doesn't like the extra '&'!

Does anyone know how I can put the '&' into the search string and keep it there?

I'm going rather mad so please put me out of my misery.

it becomes

<a href="http://www.christopherpiperwines.co.uk/cgi-bin/ss000001.pl?RANDOM=NETQUOTEVAR%3ARANDOM&PAGE=SEARCH&SS=&TB=A&PR=-1&S_REGION0_0=France+-+Bordeaux+-+Listrac+&+Moulis&GB=A&ACTION=Search">Listrac &amp; Moulis</a>

Help

Alex

[NormanRouxel]

The & character is a separator in search strings so you're inadvertantly splitting your input in two. Try using %26 instead.

You should probably encode all your non alphanumeric so.