html_entity_decode Convert all HTML entities to their applicable characters &reftitle.description; stringhtml_entity_decode stringstring intquote_style stringcharset html_entity_decode is the opposite of htmlentities in that it converts all HTML entities to their applicable characters from string. &reftitle.parameters; string The input string. quote_style The optional second quote_style parameter lets you define what will be done with 'single' and "double" quotes. It takes on one of three constants with the default being ENT_COMPAT: Constant Name Description ENT_COMPAT Will convert double-quotes and leave single-quotes alone. ENT_QUOTES Will convert both double and single quotes. ENT_NOQUOTES Will leave both double and single quotes unconverted. charset The ISO-8859-1 character set is used as default for the optional third charset. This defines the character set used in conversion. &reference.strings.charsets; &reftitle.returnvalues; Returns the decoded string. &reftitle.changelog; &Version; &Description; 5.0.0 Support for mutli-byte character sets was added. &reftitle.examples; dog now"; $a = htmlentities($orig); $b = html_entity_decode($a); echo $a; // I'll "walk" the <b>dog</b> now echo $b; // I'll "walk" the dog now // For users prior to PHP 4.3.0 you may do this: function unhtmlentities($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); } $c = unhtmlentities($a); echo $c; // I'll "walk" the dog now ?> ]]> &reftitle.notes; You might wonder why trim(html_entity_decode('&nbsp;')); doesn't reduce the string to an empty string, that's because the '&nbsp;' entity is not ASCII code 32 (which is stripped by trim) but ASCII code 160 (0xa0) in the default ISO 8859-1 characterset. &reftitle.seealso; htmlentities htmlspecialchars get_html_translation_table urldecode