title: Escaping URL &'s when launching browser from Ruby script
body: <p>Using ruby 1.9.2 I am writing a windows script that intends to launch a browser on a URL that contains a number of parameters. I have tried the various ways of launching a browser process:
    'start #{url}`
    system( "start #{url}" )
    ...</p>
  
  <p>My URL contains a number of parameters and therefore contains &amp;'s. The problem is that the &amp;'s seem to be interpreted by the shell and I have not figured out how to escape them such that they are correctly passed to the browser.</p>
  
  <p>Any ideas?  Thanks!</p>