I am developing application in flex 3 which interacts with the Google feeds to produce my results. The URL to which i want to send request is something like this

http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes?q=football+-soccer&start-index=11&max-results=10

Now i can send and receive results with q parameter, but in the next two parameters has a '-' (start-index and max-results). I am using HTTPService to send the requeset like this.

SearchService.url = "http://books.google.com/books/feeds/volumes";

SearchService.method = "GET";

SearchService.contentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"

Here SearchService is the HTTPService

var params:Object = new Object();

params.q = searchText;

params.start-index = 11;

params.max-results = 100;

service.SearchService.send(params);

Now my flex IDE throws me a error stating 'Cannot assign a non-reference value'. Only if i send the request with this parameters, i could put pagination in my application. So how can i send HTTPService request with '-' in the URL parameters?