html characters

i am currently using the following to validiity form fields
$email=stripslashes(htmlspecialchars($_POST['email']));

thats fine and all, but i would like the user to be able to login using their email but htmlspecialchars filters out @. what is another way to secure my forms but allow users to login with their email?

don;t think htmlspecialchars converts the @ symbol: http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlspecialchars.php

you sure you're not using htmlentities(http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.htmlentities.php)?

function myurlencode ( $TheVal )
{
return urlencode (str_replace("@","%40",$TheVal));
}

$email= myurlencode($_POST['email']);


this could help you maybe?

Why do you need to filter out HTML characters anyway? You only need to escape data before you output it (for this sort of validation anyway; you still need to check for things like SQL injections in certain cases).

what should i use that is both secure and allows member to use their email as their login?