also see function "urlencode()", useful for passing text with ampersand and other special chars through url
(i.e. the text is encoded as if sent from form using GET method)
e.g.
<?php
echo "<a href='foo.php?text=".urlencode("foo?&bar!")."'>link</a>";
?>
produces
<a href='foo.php?text=foo%3F%26bar%21'>link</a>
and if the link is followed, the $_GET["text"] in foo.php will contain "foo?&bar!"