http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=888940


in reply to decode characters from file using HTML::Entities

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.