Un-escape HTML codes in text — replace_html

Occasionally, we need to un-escape HTML codes in text. If text contains HTML codes, they are replaced with replacements, which, by default, describe replacements for "&", "<", and ">" ("&", "<", and ">", respectively).

Usage

replace_html_codes(
  text,
  replacements = list(c("&amp;", "&"), c("&lt;", "<"), c("&gt;", ">"))
)

Arguments

text: a vector (or one-dimensional list) of character strings
replacements: a list of string pairs. Each pair consists of encoded string and unencoded string, in that order. Default is list(c("&", "&"), c("<", "<"), c(">", ">"))

Value

If text is a vector, a vector of un-encoded strings. If text is a list of strings, a list of un-encoded strings of same structure. If possible, an outgoing list has simplified structure, even to the point of conversion to vector.

Details

HTML codes can arrive in text read from an Excel file by the openxlsx package due to a bug documented here.

Examples

replace_html_codes(list("a", "&amp;", "&lt;", "&gt;", "bcd"))
#> [1] "a"   "&"   "<"   ">"   "bcd"
replace_html_codes(list(c("&amp;", "&amp;"), c("&lt;", "&lt;"), c("&gt;", "&gt;")))
#> [[1]]
#> [1] "&" "&"
#> 
#> [[2]]
#> [1] "<" "<"
#> 
#> [[3]]
#> [1] ">" ">"
#>