One-click search and special characters

[Paul Barrow <pbarrow@tnc.ab.ca>]

A medical supplies database uses product categories to assist clinics
find various items from their catalog. These product data fields have
special characters such as "& / ; -". Recently we upgraded from Minivend
3.01 to 3.14-3. The lines that are used to retrieve more detailed groups
of these product categories have the form:

[tag scan/sf=sub_class_description/tf=description] [item-code] [/tag]

This successfully retrieved items whose sub_class_description might be
"Disinfectants & Antiseptics". In version 3.14-3 however the searches
result in a "No Match" error. If I edit the database to remove the
special characters the searches work without error.

What has changed between the two versions of Minivend that would cause
this problem and how can this one-click be corrected to function as
before?

Thanks - Paul