special character removal help

lucilue2003

index.html:
<A class=default href="showresults.php?category=Cars & Trucks">Cars
& Trucks</A>

showresults.php:

$catname = $HTTP_GET_VARS['category'] ;

the web broswer does this to the link:
Cars%20&%20Trucks

how do i convert the above string to just Cars & Trucks ?

Thanks.

toplay

Actually it's not the browser, but PHP itself that does this. PHP will automatically urlencode() and urldecode().

Have you really displayed the contents of your $catname variable to see what is in it, or did you post this because you observed the urlencode effect in your browser's address location? Your $catname variable should have the value of 'Cars & Trucks' in it already. If it doesn't, then you can do the following (but you really shouldn't need to since PHP does it automatically):

$catname = urldecode($HTTP_GET_VARS['category']);

see:
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.urlencode.php
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.urldecode.php

I hope that helps you.