decode_entities and _decode_entities are two different functions with two different interfaces.

#!/usr/bin/perl --
use strict;
use warnings;

use HTML::Entities;

use Test::More tests => 3;

my $str = q!amp & 59 &#59; quot "!;

is( decode_entities($str), 'amp & 59 ; quot "' );
is( join( '-', decode_entities( $str, $str ) ),
    join( '-', 'amp & 59 ; quot "' , 'amp & 59 ; quot "' ) );

{
    my $str = $str;
    _decode_entities( $str, { amp => "&", 59 => ";" }, 0 );
    is( $str, 'amp & 59 ; quot "' );
}

__END__
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t/entities.t      Test encoding/decoding of entities
t/entities2.t     Test _decode_entities()
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