passing & sign inside variables

I am using urls to pass variables.
only problem is that some of the variables contain & signs.

when read back, php treats the & sign as a seperation between two different variables.

does anybody know how to encode this properly?
id rather not go through my db and replace every instance of & with "and"!

ok. i just worked out i need to use urlencode() on my variables. it works now ... though im still getting " ' " as " \' "

hmmf.

urlencode()
urldecode()
stripslashes()