Escape method

I am trying to get this particular bit of code to work and am having
little success. Bascially what I want is to have a link that turns into
a dropdown list and when something in the list is selected I want that
new item to turn back into a link with that selected item displayed as
the link. Anyway, here is the code and I am not sure what the ‘:with’
and am also not sure what the ‘escape’ method is doing either. Can
anyone explain this to me? Thanks,

<% func = remote_function( :update => ‘exclude_1’, :url => {:action =>
‘set_exclude_airline_1’}, :with => “‘id=’ + escape(value)” ) -%>

<% @airlines = Airline.find( :all, :order => ‘name’ ) %>
<% if @user.exclude_air_1.nil? %>

">
<%= options_from_collection_for_select @airlines, ‘id’, ‘name’ %>

-S