Fixing unescaped ampersands

[Takshaka]

I've got a MySQL db which has unescaped ampersands (&) which need fixing without changing any properly escaped ampersands and other entities which are present - ie I need to change & to & without changing & to & or ń to ń.

I thought I'd be able to do it with a regular expression in a MySQL query but it seems this won't work as MySql doesn't support negative lookaheads in regular expressions.

Any suggestions as to how this could be achieved would be very welcome!

Thanks

[devinemke]

are all of the amps you want to change surrounded by spaces on either side? if so then just do:

$data = str_replace(' & ', '&', $data);

[Takshaka]

Thanks for the suggestion but unfortunately they are not all surrounded by space which is what is making this so difficult.