How can I preserve character entities in generated output?

This question has to have come up before, but I'm having a heck of time trying to find any threads on the subject. I'm using the VFE to allow users to enter data in a free form format. They can change fonts, use bulleted lists, etc. In the resulting DCR this is all stored in the various <value> nodes as the character entities, i.e. for a bulleted list it shows up as:

< ;ul> ;< ;li> ;List Item< ;/li> ;< ;/ul> ;

(I had to put spaces in before each semi-colon to keep the system from interpreting the character entities)

The file I am generating is another XML file and I'd like to put the value exactly as it appears in the DCR into the resulting XML file. What's happening instead is when I use an <iw_value> in the presentation template my resulting XML ends up looking something like this:

<sampleNode><ul><li>List Item</li></ul></sampleNode>

This isn't what I want at all. I want this:

<sampleNode>
< ;ul> ;< ;li> ;List Item< ;/li> ;< ;/ul> ;
</sampleNode>

(Had to use spaces again)

So, is there a way to keep the character entities from being converted to their equivalent HTML characters when generating a file? I really hope this makes sense and I've communicated what it is I'm trying to accomplish. Thanks!

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Comments

Migrateduser

use HTML::Entities::encode_entities($string)

Lex

Do I need to do that within a <iw_perl></iw_perl> tag in my presentation template?

Migrateduser

yes you can't use perl modules, functions outside the iw_perl tag
<iw_perl>
my $string = iwpt_dcr_value('xpath/to/dcr/node');
$string = HTML::Entities::encode_entities($string);
<iw_perl>

Lex

Ah, thank you. That's exactly what I needed. I know just enough Perl to be dangerous and I would never have figured that all out. Thanks again.