Wordpress provides a function called "the_permalink()" that returns, you guessed it!, the permalink to a given post while in a loop of posts.

I am trying to URL encode that permalink and when I execute this code:

<?php
print(the_permalink());
$permalink = the_permalink();
print($permalink);
print(urlencode(the_permalink()));
print(urlencode($permalink));
$url = 'http://wpmu.local/graphjam/2008/11/06/test4/';
print($url);
print(urlencode($url));
?>

it produces these results in HTML:

http://wpmu.local/graphjam/2008/11/06/test4/
http://wpmu.local/graphjam/2008/11/06/test4/
http://wpmu.local/graphjam/2008/11/06/test4/
http://wpmu.local/graphjam/2008/11/06/test4/
http%3A%2F%2Fwpmu.local%2Fgraphjam%2F2008%2F11%2F06%2Ftest4%2F

I would expect lines 2, 3 and 5 of the output to be URL encoded, but only line 5 is so. Thoughts?