From a node I can't find on perlmonks comes this handy trick:

my %entity = ( 
               '<' => '&lt;', 
               '>' => '&gt;', 
               '&' => '&amp;',
               '"' => '&quot;',
             );
$output =~ s/([<>&"])/$entity{$1}/g;
print $output;
[download]

I use it all the time for debug output

Dingus

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