diff --git a/reference/strings/functions/html-entity-decode.xml b/reference/strings/functions/html-entity-decode.xml
index 07997bd545..f44516e72f 100644
--- a/reference/strings/functions/html-entity-decode.xml
+++ b/reference/strings/functions/html-entity-decode.xml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
-<!-- $Revision: 1.9 $ -->
+<!-- $Revision: 1.10 $ -->
 <!-- splitted from ./en/functions/strings.xml, last change in rev 1.2 -->
   <refentry id="function.html-entity-decode">
    <refnamediv>
@@ -78,6 +78,10 @@ echo $b; // I'll "walk" the <b>dog</b> now
 // For users prior to PHP 4.3.0 you may do this:
 function unhtmlentities($string) 
 {
+    // replace numeric entities
+    $string = preg_replace('~&#x([0-9a-f]+);~ei', 'chr(hexdec("\\1"))', $string);
+    $string = preg_replace('~&#([0-9]+);~e', 'chr(\\1)', $string);
+    // replace literal entities
     $trans_tbl = get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES);
     $trans_tbl = array_flip($trans_tbl);
     return strtr($string, $trans_tbl);