title: How to handle special characters like & and / in .htaccess rules?
body: <p>In my .htaccess file I have defined following rule,</p>
  
  <pre><code>RewriteRule ^([-0-9a-zA-Z]+) search.php?id=$1
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The above rule works fine if I am browsing <a href="http://example.com/abcd" rel="nofollow">http://example.com/abcd</a>
  I need to use the symbols <code>&amp; % - /</code> in the url like: <a href="http://example.com/ab&amp;cd" rel="nofollow">http://example.com/ab&amp;cd</a></p>
  
  <p>What changes have to be made to the rule for this to work?</p>