decode characters from file using HTML::Entities

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi, I have a file contains single line (actually i have multilines in original file), its like:

Thomas Ack\x26#39\x3Bhing
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The file was generated by WWW::Mechanize, and I want to decode the string above, so i made a script :

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use HTML::Entities;

open my $fh, '<', 'source.html' or die $!;
my $string = do { local $/; <$fh> };
print decode_entities( $string);
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And failed, not sure why

But when i tried this code (put the string inside the script)

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

use HTML::Entities;
my $string = "Thomas Ack\x26#39\x3Bhing";
print decode_entities( $string);
#Output: Thomas Ack'hing
[download]

So anyone have a solution for the problem ?

Comment on decode characters from file using HTML::Entities Select or Download Code

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Re: decode characters from file using HTML::Entities by ikegami (Patriarch) on Feb 18, 2011 at 16:18 UTC
There are no HTML entities in that file. HTML entities start with "&", but there are no "&" in that file. Where one would expect a "&", there's "\","x","2","6". The second snippet decodes an entirely different string. Whereas you decode «`Thomas Ack\x26#39\x3Bhing`» in the first snippet, you construct and decode «`Thomas Ack'hing`» in the second snippet.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: decode characters from file using HTML::Entities by Anonymous Monk on Feb 18, 2011 at 16:37 UTC
Ah I understand (maybe :)), i think i forgot about double quotes (so \x26 is actually "&"), correct ? So i guess the right tool is to use Encode..	[reply]
Re^3: decode characters from file using HTML::Entities by ikegami (Patriarch) on Feb 18, 2011 at 19:46 UTC
Yes, the Perl string literal «`"\x26"`» evaluates to the string «`&`». No idea what Encode has to do with this.	[reply] [d/l] [select]