You can do this with a simple module, The following is adapted from PerlIO::via::QuotedPrint and can be installed into the same directory as that module.

package PerlIO::via::HtmlEncode;
 
 
$VERSION = '0.01';
use strict;
 
 
use HTML::Entities;
 
 
1;
 
sub PUSHED { bless \*PUSHED,$_[0] }
 
 
sub FILL {
 
    my $line = readline( $_[1] );
    (defined $line) ? decode_entities( $line ) : undef;
}
 
sub WRITE {
 
    (print {$_[2]} encode_entities($_[1])) ? length($_[1]) : -1;
}
 
1;
[download]

and then you can just do something like:

use PerlIO::via::HtmlEncode;
                                                                      
+          
binmode STDOUT,':via(HtmlEncode)';
                                                                      
+          
print "&£<>";
[download]

If I get a minute I could package that and upload it to CPAN.

/J\