How do I echo the "&" chracter? :S

uNF

Hi all,

Can anybody tell me how to echo &?

When I try with this:

echo "<a href=\"index.php?action=site&sect=privacy\">Privacy</a>";

It gives the url as:

index.php?action=site§=privacy

Any ideas?

Thanks heaps 😃

xblue

really funny what today's browsers try to do for you. this is actually not a php problem, but something the browser does.

§ is the html version of §, and even though there is no semicolon, browsers may decide that you wanted a § (IE 5 does this, too).

try using

echo "<a href=\"index.php?action=site&amp;amp;sect=privacy\">Privacy</a>";

EDIT: sorry for not noticing the forum parsed the html entity. I fully agree with simulant that it would make sense to turn this off.

jpmoriarty

deja vu anybody?

simulant

echo "&";

This will output an ampersand. Check out the other HTML character entity references you can use:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/sgml/entities.html#h-24.4.1

simulant

oops.......looks like the forum text is actually parsing the character entities (can this be turned off, forum developers?):

here's the real answer:

echo "[ampersand]amp;";

where [ampersand] is of course "&"

simulant

grrrr.......stupid! stupid!.....ignore that last post..... 😃

echo "&amp;";

jpmoriarty

that wont work in a href though - the code that you (eventually) got out is rendered by the HTML browser into the ampersand character, but remains as the code that you gave in the source code. Therefore, it will remain in the link, and wont be interpreted (as it's meant to be) as a separation between the variables in the GET.

ahundiak

jpmoriarty,
Gonna have to disagree with you. Using & amp; in a href will work. The browser takes care of converting it. In fact, for xhtml, using & by itself is NOT allowed.

http://validator.w3.org/docs/errors.html#bad-entity

jpmoriarty

huh - in which case i stand corrected