stop 404 if ? or & in URL

[eluser]faceh[/eluser]
I dont want to write hacks...

I want to include a mod_rewrite line to catch all URLs with "catalog" at the start (the base dir of the old site, not used in new one) and redirect them to my new base url. Do you know the mod_rewrite case I will need?

Also after a few months search engines will have lost the old URLs and are using the new ones.

Search engines yes. Permalinks in peoples blogs, etc. will not.