<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >htmlspecialchars</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.44"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="PHP Manual" HREF="manual.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="String functions" HREF="ref.strings.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="htmlentities" HREF="function.htmlentities.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="implode" HREF="function.implode.html"></HEAD ><BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >PHP Manual</TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="function.htmlentities.html" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" ></TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="function.implode.html" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><H1 ><A NAME="function.htmlspecialchars" >htmlspecialchars</A ></H1 ><DIV CLASS="refnamediv" ><A NAME="AEN25830" ></A >htmlspecialchars -- Convert special characters to HTML entities. </DIV ><DIV CLASS="refsect1" ><A NAME="AEN25833" ></A ><H2 >Description</H2 ><DIV CLASS="funcsynopsis" ><P ></P ><CODE CLASS="FUNCDEF" >string htmlspecialchars</CODE >(string string);<P ></P ></DIV ><P > 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 these conversions made. </P ><P > This function is useful in preventing user-supplied text from containing HTML markup, such as in a message board or guest book application. </P ><P > At present, the translations that are done are: <P ></P ><UL ><LI ><P > '&' (ampersand) becomes '&amp;' </P ></LI ><LI ><P > '"' (double quote) becomes '&quot;' </P ></LI ><LI ><P > '<' (less than) becomes '&lt;' </P ></LI ><LI ><P > '>' (greater than) becomes '&gt;' </P ></LI ></UL > </P ><P > Note that this functions does not translate anything beyond what is listed above. For full entity translation, see <A HREF="function.htmlentities.html" ><B CLASS="function" >htmlentities()</B ></A >. </P ><P > See also <A HREF="function.htmlentities.html" ><B CLASS="function" >htmlentities()</B ></A > and <A HREF="function.nl2br.html" ><B CLASS="function" >nl2br()</B ></A >. </P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="function.htmlentities.html" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="manual.html" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="function.implode.html" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >htmlentities</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="ref.strings.html" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >implode</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >