HttpUtility.HtmlDecode() fails for some characters

Question

See this code:

namespace TestHtmlDecode
{
    using Microsoft.VisualStudio.TestTools.UnitTesting;
    using System.Web;

    [TestClass]
    public class TestHtmlDecode
    {
        private string Convert(string input)
        {
            return HttpUtility.HtmlDecode(input);
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestLeftBrace()
        {
            Assert.AreEqual("{", Convert("{"));
        }

        [TestMethod]
        public void TestGreaterThan()
        {
            Assert.AreEqual(">", Convert(">"));
        }
    }
}

TestGreaterThan passes, but TestLeftBrace fails ( Convert returns { ). Why is this?

Answer 1

Looks like there are two things going on here.

1. &lbrace is a { and not [ ( http://jsfiddle.net/B7AAh/1/ )

2. It doesn't look like &lbrace is included in the list of of known items. Source code is here http://referencesource.microsoft.com/#System/net/System/Net/WebUtility.cs which refers to the list of entities found here http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/entities.html