How to encode special characters using mod_rewrite & Apache?

Question

I would like to have pretty URLs for my tagging system along with all the special characters: +, &, #, %, and =

Answer 1

I finally made it work with the help of RewriteMap.

Added the escape map in httpd.conf file RewriteMap es int:escape

and used it in Rewrite rule

RewriteRule ([^?.]*) /abc?arg1=${es:$1}&country_sniff=true [L]