I'm dealing with a [replacement character](http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/fffd/index.htm) inside a MySQL database... and it's fine if it stays there but I'm trying to edit it. My form displays the character as a diamond shape with a question mark in it (�). So I submit the form, I compare the data between the one on the form to the one in the data to see if it has changed. The problem here is that when I submit the form it turns the replacement character into **&****#65533;** which is the html entity equivalent so when this happens it fails the comparison and the code thinks the string has changed-- which it has, but not really. I've tried to employ different methods of either turning the replacement character into the html entity equivalent from the database when it's being compared --it starts to turn another seemingly normal characters into another replacement character html entity equivalent-- and turning the html entities into the replacement character --which simply does not work for this-- but they both fail. And yes, I have tried html\_entity\_decode() and htmlspecialchars\_decode()

My questions is: How can I keep the replacement character from turning into an html entity?