category issues

Can anybody tell me how to:
1. display my links without indicating or separating them by category? I am using <?php get_links_list(); ?> but this spits out categories followed by links. For now, I’d like to make the categories of links invisible to my visitors.
2. use some kind of separator between post categories? I am using <?php the_category() ?> to display the category or categories of a post about the post’s title. When a post resides in more than one category, I’d like to separate them with a comma, ampersand, or something.
Any ideas would be appreciated.