title: Is using &amp; as a Query Parameter delimiter valid?
body: <p>If I have a URL with query parameters, is it valid to "escape" the &amp; query parameter delimiter?</p>
  
  <p>Ex.</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;a href="/foo.html?cat=meow&amp;dog=woof"&gt;go&lt;/a&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>vs</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;a href="/foo.html?cat=meow&amp;amp;dog=woof"&gt;go&lt;/a&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>RFC 2396 clearly states that use of "&amp;" is proper, but i cant find anything on the (in)validity of using escaped versions of the reserved characters. </p>
  
  <p>One thing i noticed is Chrome seems to forgive them when clicking on the link in the browser, however when i view source of the page, and click on the link (/foo.html?cat=meow&amp;dog=woof) from the view-source view, it doesn't work. </p>
  
  <p>I'd love to know if there is any spec/section i can point to that says "only use &amp; and dont use &amp; or %26 (which is &amp; URL encoded). </p>
  
  <p>(Note: this question arises as I started working w a code base that structures their URLs in this fashion, I would personally use '&amp;')</p>
  
  <p>RCF 2396: <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt" rel="nofollow">http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt</a></p>
  
  <p>UPDATE 1</p>
  
  <p>Correct - the actual URL that the server writes to the page is: &lt; a href="/foo.html?cat=meow&amp;dog=woof" >go&lt; /a > .. is there a spec that speaks to the validity of using &amp; as a query param delimiter? Im not looking for "what works mostly" in browsers, but what is the <em>correct</em> way(s) to delimit query params.</p>