#NOTE: the first entry here is an extended regex that says, match an & that is NOT followed by between 2 and 4 word characters and a semicolon.
#This should prevent it from double-encoding entites that already exist and hence corrupting the XML.

my @entities_bare=qw/&(?!\w{2,4};) " ' < >/;
my @entities_encoded=qw/&amp; &quot; &apos; &lt; &gt;/;

sub encode_entities {
	my $string=shift;
	
	#print "trace: in encode_entities\n";
	for(my $n=0;$n<scalar @entities_bare;++$n){
		#print "encode_entities: searching for ".$entities_bare[$n]." to replace with ".$entities_encoded[$n]."...\n";
	
		if(not $string=~s/$entities_bare[$n]/$entities_encoded[$n]/g){
			#print "encode_entities: WARNING: found no entites for ".$entities_bare[$n].".\n";
		}
	}
	return $string;
}