PHP htmlentities() and htmlspecialchars() are broken / do not work

Question

I have used these two functions in the past,and they worked fine. I'm developing a CakePHP application and for some reason use of either of these functions does NOTHING. I've setup a simple test, and I can't believe it's returning true:

$loc_title = htmlentities($location['locations']['title']);

if(htmlentities($location['locations']['title']) === $location['locations']['title']){

    echo "htmlentaties is broken.";
}

What could cause these functions to stop working properly?

Answer 1

Consider changing

htmlentities($location['locations']['title'] === $location['locations']['title'])

to

htmlentities($location['locations']['title']) === $location['locations']['title']

for instance ;-)

Beause what you're doing here is you escape entities in the result of comparison of title with itself. Which most likely evaluates to true.