php echoing angle brackets

Question

I want to display text on the page, the text should look like this:

... but when I echo this, nothing appears!!

How ca I do thi

Answer 1

You need to call htmlentities() to convert the HTML metacharacters into something that will display properly.

Answer 2

You probably want <sometext>.

If that text is coming from user input, you should definitely use htmlspecialchars() on it, to help prevent XSS.

Answer 3

This is because the browser assumes it is an unknown tag. If you want the browser to show it, use:

echo '<sometext>'; 

or use the htmlentities function like so:

echo htmlentities('<sometext>');

Answer 4

A "page" is written in HTML, so < means "Start a tag".

You have to represent characters with special meaning in HTML using entities.

You can write them directly, or make use of the htmlspecialchars function.

echo "<sometext>";
echo htmlspecialchars("<sometext>");