> > If I'm not mistaken, in python, there's no standard library to convert
> > html entities, like & or > into their applicable characters.

> > htmlentitydefs provides maps that helps this conversion,
> > but it's not a function so you have to write your own function
> > make use of  htmlentitydefs, probably using regex or something.

> > To me this seemed odd because python is known as
> > 'Batteries Included' language.

> > So my questions are
> > 1. Why doesn't python have/need entity encoding/decoding?
> > 2. Is there any idiom to do entity encode/decode in python?

> > Thank you in advance.

> I think this is the standard idiom:

> >>> import xml.sax.saxutils as saxutils
> >>> saxutils.escape("&")
> '&'
> >>> saxutils.unescape(">")
> '>'
> >>> saxutils.unescape("A bunch of text with entities: & > <")
> 'A bunch of text with entities: & > <'

> Notice there is an optional parameter (a dict) that can be used to
> define additional entities as well.

> Matt

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