LinuxQuestions.org - alternative way to write an ampersand (or another fix to my superkaramba problem)?

Hey everyone,

I use superkaramba to embed an index of my friends latest blog entries (via rss) on my desktop. It works fine, but the one problem i've been having is that, for blogs on xanga, the urls of individual entries are formatted as follows:
http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?tab=w...&uid=XXXXXXXXX

and superkaramba seems to choke on the ampersand, making the link it embeds on the desktop:

http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?tab=weblogs

a snipit of code inside the .theme file is as follows:

TEXT X=0 Y=17 H=13 W=325 SENSOR=PROGRAM PROGRAM="/home/fibbi/install/visuals/karamba/NewsTicker/scripts/rssnews.pl Tom" LINE=3
CLICKAREA X=0 Y=17 W=300 H=13 ONCLICK="konqueror %v" SENSOR=PROGRAM PROGRAM="/home/fibbi/install/visuals/karamba/NewsTicker/scripts/rssnews.pl Tom" LINE=4

As you can see, the theme calls the script rssnews.pl and gives it the argument "Tom" (Or the name of whoever's blog it wants the feed from, and the script returns this:

XXXXXXXXXs Xanga Site
http://www.xanga.com/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
4/13/2004 8:12:24 PM
http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?tab=w...id=XXXXXXXXXXX
4/13/2004 3:25:43 AM
http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?tab=w...uid=XXXXXXXXXX
4/13/2004 3:10:03 AM
http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?tab=w...uid=XXXXXXXXXX
4/12/2004 6:44:12 PM
http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?tab=w...&uid=XXXXXXXXX
4/12/2004 4:33:30 PM
http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?tab=w...X&uid=XXXXXXXX

(the X's are there just to preserve the anonymity of my friends)

So, It looks like i have 2 options: I can modify the perl script to replace the & with an alternative string that does the same thing(i dont know what this would be though), or i could fix the SuperKaramba problem itself.

Anyone know how to do either of the two?

Thanks,
-fibbi