html_entity_decode Convert all HTML entities to their applicable characters 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. 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. The ISO-8859-1 character set is used as default for the optional third charset. This defines the character set used in conversion. 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) { $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 ?> ]]> See also htmlentities, htmlspecialchars, get_html_translation_table, htmlspecialchars and urldecode.