Special characters in the URI?

[eluser]ryeguy[/eluser]
Is there a way to encode special characters in the URI without enabling them all in the config? I tried using urlencode(), but the percent signs mess everything up and for some reason the server spits out:

Code:

Bad Request
Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

I guess a solution would be to step through the string before it is put in the uri and encode the special characters myself. I could look at each char, see if it is a special character, and if it is, replace it with _asc(character)_. That would be ugly, increase the length of my uri, and it makes me feel dirty. Please don't make me do this.