How to get &curren to display literally, not as an HTML entity

Question

I'm using php to look at an XML file that has a URL in it. The URLs look something like this:

https://site.com/bacon_report?Id=1&report=1&currentDimension=2&param=1

When I echo out the URLs, the "&curren" shows up as "¤" (AKA #164, A4 or currency symbol) and the links don't work. This happens even though there isn't a closing semicolon for it. What is the cleanest way to make "&curren" display literally?

Answer 1

Funny enough I ran into the same problem just now and I found this answer. However, I found another solution which might even be better!

Simply put the variable at the beginning of your query string, and you will avoid the &curren completely.

Do:

https://site.com/bacon_report?currentDimension=2&Id=1&report=1&param=1

instead of:

https://site.com/bacon_report?Id=1&report=1&currentDimension=2&param=1