in PHP using special characters

Question

In PHP I am trying to write a string in a file.

hi hello world<Data="Text">Vtt</Text> How are you

but writing this is showing the string with special characters such as < and >

$a = htmlentities($m_str_val);
$str_final = html_entity_decode($a);

How can this can be solved?

Answer 1

The htmlentities() function converts all applicable entities into their HTML equivalent.

' will become '

< will become < '

> will become >

etc.

If you don't want the conversion to happen, don't use htmlentities(). Simply write $m_str_val to the file as-is.