Access post excerpt through $post variable

Hey Guys,

Was just wondering if anyone knew of a way to access a post’s excerpt through the $post global variable, as opposed to using the_excerpt. I want to run this through urlencode, so as the_excerpt echoes the result, I can’t use that.

Many Thanks in Advance,
Oliver

P.S. I can’t find any documentation for the post variable – so don’t know what the end of it is (I thought maybe $post->excerpt but that didn’t work!)