Special characters issue

Hello,

I've got a form that I need to pass data through in order to query my database. This form needs to be able to query such things as "qwe#rty," however, if I do this, only "qwe" is being passed through, and everything else is being ignored. 

I don't believe my form is the problem, as it has a redirect, and it redirects correctly (xxx/qwe#rty). But when I attempt to echo my variable that passed 'qwe#rty', it'll only echo 'qwe' and ignore the special character, and anything else after, querying the database with only 'qwe.'

I've tried using $this->uri->segment, and had the same problem. I've also tried urlencode/urldecode, and ended up with the same problem, with % and anything after being ignored.

Thanks in advance if anyone can help.