Aggregator URL Parsing/handoff bug

Possibly not a drupal bug, but a long 'google news' generated RSS feed fails to pass all the parameters.

I created the google news search (http://news.google.com/) on a keyword, but omitting a few other keywords (using 'advanced news search') to limit the search. Google provides this 197 character long RSS feed link on the results page:

Link #1:
http://news.google.com/news?svnum=10&as_scoring=n&hl=en&tab=wn&ned=us&ie...

This link works as expected when entered into a browser.

I enter that as a RSS source using the Aggregator module (just updated to drupal 5.7). You can see the result on my test site:

http://www.ztnews.com/aggregator/sources/2

The stories pulled by drupal/aggregator are NOT the same as pulled using the google RSS feed directly, as if the 'omit word' qualifiers have been ignored by google.

To reproduce: enter Link #1 above as a news source in aggregator module, drupal 5.7.

I expect the stories to be selected based on the query string "q=thermoelectric+-plant+-plants+-natural"

In fact, the omit terms marked by a minus sign "-" are ignored. To see the difference, you have to compare the stories pulled by directly entering the URL into a browser to the stories pulled by drupal, which ignores the 'omit' keywords.

Since the feed works fine otherwise, I'm wondering if the minus signs are getting munged (truncated?) somehow when the query is passed off by drupal to Google.

In fact, if I simply remove some of the un-necessary (for me) parameters to shorten the google generated URL, the query works like expected. So I have a perfectly satisfactory work-around by shortening the URL. But I'm reporting it in case others see something similar.

Great module. Hoping someone can sort it out for me. Thx!!

-- Cronin