How do I escape an ampersand in a url?

[stocks]

I want to use file_get_contents to read a url, but it can't read the second arg because it seems to stop at the ampersand.

[Zenax]

why not mask the orignal URL with one from tinyurl.com

it will make the string shorter but also remove any unwanted ampersands. The URL will still load. Try it and see...

[Catzwolf]

First not sure why you are using that method to gey the adress of a url, but the answer to your problem is:

$url = htmlspecialchars( $url );

[shaunak]

Answer to your question...
& escapes as %26

[VPmase]

&'s character code is & in HTML