I am trying to parse a long string like this:

```
asfdasdlfkjdk&dasfdas&amp;asdfkjsdakldfjk&

```

to produce the following output:

```
asfdasdlfkjdk&amp;dasfdas&amp;asdfkjsdakldfjk&amp;

```

basically i just need to replace any ampersand that isn't encoded into a string value that is encoded :

```
& => &amp;

```

i could do this with a string replace, but i would risk having values like this:

```
&amp;amp;

```