When using a CCK text field that is set to display as a select list, using the "Allowed Values" textarea to specify each of the choices works 99% of the time. But when trying to use an option that included an ampersand, like "Drupal & Drupal", it keeps getting escaped to & -  stop it CCK!

What's going on? Each line of the textarea is eventually passed through filter_xss(), which tries it's best to remove naughty characters like &, becauseof its special meaning in HTML.

How to avoid it? Use the section "PHP Code" and write your values out as an array. You must specify a key and value pair for each option, CCK will not automatically handle just having the value. Don't forget to return the array. PHP open and closing tags arent needed. CCK trusts the values found in this block, and pass them through any kind of text filtering, and your ampsersands will sail through undamaged.

So

Drupal & Drupal
Hans & Franz
Martin & Lewis

become

return array(
'Drupal & Drupal' => 'Drupal & Drupal',
'Hans & Franz' => 'Hans & Franz',
'Martin & Lewis' => 'Martin & Lewis',
);