Wordpress get_results parsing the symbol "&" - wordpress

Question

I have a strange Thing, where I do not know where the failure is.
$name = "Fast & Furious 8";
$res1 = $wpdb->prepare(
"
SELECT
*
FROM
wp_dbtable
WHERE
filmname = '%s'
LIMIT 1
",
$name
);
$res = $wpdb->get_results( $res1 );
foreach($res as $reseachG) {
}
I have a Problem with the Symbol &. For some reasons it does not pull anything out of my table, even if it should do this.
If I use instead of the variable the text it self, like this:
$res1 = $wpdb->prepare(
"
SELECT
*
FROM
wp_dbtable
WHERE
filmname = '%s'
LIMIT 1
",
"Fast & Furious 8"
);
it works. Also, other text inside the variable works well.
So it seems that prepare, or get_results does not accept this Symbol, or changes it. How can I solve it? I couldn't find any hint on the Internet.
It might not be a PHP-Problem, or a My-SQL-Problem, it might be a Problem of WordPress classes.
Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

The code above is correct. The Problem was, that I pulled the text for the filmname out of the data base. He transformed the & into html-special-chars. So I had to run: htmlspecialchars_decode($filmname);. It was not easy to find, becase every print method printed the correct text.
I found an function on the Internet, which shows me hidden chars and every single real entiti. Maybe it will help some of you also:
function hexdump ($data, $htmloutput = true, $uppercase = false, $return = false){
// Init
$hexi = '';
$ascii = '';
$dump = ($htmloutput === true) ? '<pre>' : '';
$offset = 0;
$len = strlen($data);
// Upper or lower case hexadecimal
$x = ($uppercase === false) ? 'x' : 'X';
// Iterate string
for ($i = $j = 0; $i < $len; $i++)
{
// Convert to hexidecimal
$hexi .= sprintf("%02$x ", ord($data[$i]));
// Replace non-viewable bytes with '.'
if (ord($data[$i]) >= 32) {
$ascii .= ($htmloutput === true) ?
htmlentities($data[$i]) :
$data[$i];
} else {
$ascii .= '.';
}
// Add extra column spacing
if ($j === 7) {
$hexi .= ' ';
$ascii .= ' ';
}
// Add row
if (++$j === 16 || $i === $len - 1) {
// Join the hexi / ascii output
$dump .= sprintf("%04$x %-49s %s", $offset, $hexi, $ascii);
// Reset vars
$hexi = $ascii = '';
$offset += 16;
$j = 0;
// Add newline
if ($i !== $len - 1) {
$dump .= "\n";
}
}
}
// Finish dump
$dump .= $htmloutput === true ?
'</pre>' :
'';
$dump .= "\n";
// Output method
if ($return === false) {
echo $dump;
} else {
return $dump;
}
}
Which shows you the hexa-codes for each char and also every single space, line, special trasformed symbol, or line-braker. It helps to see the real data.
thx to all.