POSTing escpaded char data and &'s??

Question

I'm trying to send data via a CGI POST request but I'm running into to a couple problems.
First, a portion of the data comes from static strings within my code that have double quotes within the strings. I escape the quotes with a backslash but the backslash is showing up within the POST data within my PHP script. If I simply display the data that PHP sees it looks exactly like the static strings, backslashes and all. This is how I'm trying to accomplish the post currently:
URL lurl_bene;
HttpURLConnection lcon_bene;
BufferedReader in;
PrintWriter out;
lurl_bene = new URL("http://192.168.100.5/cgi-bin/sync.php");
lcon_bene = (HttpURLConnection)lurl_bene.openConnection();
lcon_bene.setDoOutput(true);
lcon_bene.setRequestMethod("POST");
out = new PrintWriter(lcon_bene.getOutputStream());
out.write("sync=" + lsb_xml.toString()); // lsb_xml is a preconstructed string buffer
I've tried outputting the string to standard out and writing it out to a file and neither of them display the backslahses.
Secondly, The POST data stops as soon as it hits an &. I don't know if this is Java or PHP but if I print the contents of the POST variable within PHP it contains everything up to, but not including the first ampersand. I tried creating a simple html form try to send the data with a browser and the ampersands go through just fine. Do the browsers automatically escape the ampersands within the data you are sending?
Thanks in advance
- Frustrated

Answer 1

First of all, I know nothing about CGI or PHP. Secondly, I'm no expert at Java (I want to cover my bases here).
That said, I believe that using \" will force Java to use the char '"', there will never be any record of a \ being used. If you were to get the bytes of the String, and go through one by one, you would never find the char code for \.
So, I guess it would have to be something to do with the PHP script.
Second, I've never heard of java choking on a & in a string. But the easiest way to find out is to test it yourself. Get it to print out a & in the same context you wanted PHP to (or perhaps the same String) and see if Java handles it. I strongly suspect it will. So again (sorry) I'm gonna have to point the finger at PHP.
Anyway, this is all speculation, and I only post because no one else has.
Good luck,
Radish21