---
name: "hxunent"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "html-xml-utils"
version: "8.8-1"
release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/hxunent"
---

# hxunent(1)

replace HTML predefined character entities by UTF-8

## NAME

hxunent - replace HTML predefined character entities by UTF-8

## SYNOPSIS

**hxunent** \[ **-b** \] \[ **-f** \] \[ *file* \]

## DESCRIPTION

The **hxunent** command reads the *file* (or standard input) and copies it to standard output with &-entities by their equivalent character (encoded as UTF-8). E.g., &quot; is replaced by " and &lt; is replaced by \<.

## OPTIONS

The following options are supported:

- **-b**

  The five builtin entities of XML (&lt; &gt; &quot; &apos; &amp;) are not replaced but copied unchanged. This is necessary if the output has to be valid XML or SGML.

- **-f**

  This option changes how unknown entities or lone ampersands are handled. Normally they are copied unchanged, but this option tries to "fix" them by replacing ampersands by &amp;. Often such stray ampersands are the result of copy and paste of URLs into a document and then this option indeed fixes them and makes the document valid.

## DIAGNOSTICS

The program's exit value is 0 if all went well, otherwise:

- **1**

  The input couldn't be read (file not found, file not readable...)

- **2**

  Wrong command line arguments.

## SEE ALSO

[**asc2xml**(1)](/asc2xml/1.md), [**xml2asc**(1)](/xml2asc/1.md), **UTF-8** (RFC 2279)

## BUGS

The program assumes entities are as defined by HTML. It doesn't read a document's DTD to find the actual definitions in use in a document.  With **-f**, it will even remove all entities that are not HTML entities.