This is not a hypothetical problem, it has actually happened.
not really, users can rely on this beeing working by default, if not it´s a bug and gets fixed (as in 4.0.3 if it was wrong in 4.0.2 following your msg), so you shouldn´t encourage them not to use them as intended
No, it isn't. Look at the code. For both htmlspecialchars, and htmlentities,
the same function is used. This function uses the translation table only
for characters 160 and above, and has some other hard-coded translations
which are used regardless of what the table says.
sure, where´s the problem? htmlentities implies htmlspecialchars...
andré