htmlspecialchars Convert special characters to HTML entities &reftitle.description; stringhtmlspecialchars stringstring intflagsENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401 stringcharset booldouble_encodetrue Certain characters have special significance in HTML, and should be represented by HTML entities if they are to preserve their meanings. This function returns a string with some of these conversions made; the translations made are those most useful for everyday web programming. If you require all HTML character entities to be translated, use htmlentities instead. This function is useful in preventing user-supplied text from containing HTML markup, such as in a message board or guest book application. The translations performed are: '&' (ampersand) becomes '&amp;' '"' (double quote) becomes '&quot;' when ENT_NOQUOTES is not set. "'" (single quote) becomes '&#039;' only when ENT_QUOTES is set. '<' (less than) becomes '&lt;' '>' (greater than) becomes '&gt;' &reftitle.parameters; string The string being converted. flags A bitmask of one or more of the following flags, which specify how to handle quotes, invalid code unit sequences and the used document type. The default is ENT_COMPAT | ENT_HTML401. 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. ENT_IGNORE Silently discard invalid code unit sequences instead of returning an empty string. This is provided for backwards compatibility; avoid using it as it may have security implications. ENT_SUBSTITUTE Replace invalid code unit sequences with a Unicode Replacement Character U+FFFD (UTF-8) or &#FFFD; (otherwise) instead of returning an empty string. ENT_DISALLOWED Replace code unit sequences, which are invalid in the specified document type, with a Unicode Replacement Character U+FFFD (UTF-8) or &#FFFD; (otherwise). ENT_HTML401 Handle code as HTML 4.01. ENT_XML1 Handle code as XML 1. ENT_XHTML Handle code as XHTML. ENT_HTML5 Handle code as HTML 5. charset Defines character set used in conversion. The default character set is ISO-8859-1. For the purposes of this function, the charsets ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-15, UTF-8, cp866, cp1251, cp1252, and KOI8-R are effectively equivalent, provided the string itself is valid for the character set, as the characters affected by htmlspecialchars occupy the same positions in all of these charsets. &reference.strings.charsets; double_encode When double_encode is turned off PHP will not encode existing html entities, the default is to convert everything. &reftitle.returnvalues; The converted string. If the input string contains an invalid code unit sequence within the given charset and the ENT_IGNORE flag is not set, then htmlspecialchars will return an empty string. &reftitle.changelog; &Version; &Description; 5.4.0 The constants ENT_SUBSTITUTE, ENT_DISALLOWED, ENT_HTML401, ENT_XML1, ENT_XHTML and ENT_HTML5 were added. 5.3.0 The constant ENT_IGNORE was added. 5.2.3 The double_encode parameter was added. 4.1.0 The charset parameter was added. &reftitle.examples; Test", ENT_QUOTES); echo $new; // <a href='test'>Test</a> ?> ]]> &reftitle.notes; Note that this function does not translate anything beyond what is listed above. For full entity translation, see htmlentities. &reftitle.seealso; get_html_translation_table htmlspecialchars_decode strip_tags htmlentities nl2br