title: Javascript / jQuery - convert special html characters
body: <p>I have a <code>pre</code> element with some html code in it.
  the code has special characters in it, like <code>&amp;lt;</code>, so it doesn't break the page.</p>
  
  <p>Then I have a javascript function that gets the contents of this pre element, highlights it (with codemirror), and replaces the element contents with the highlighted text.</p>
  
  <p>I'm using <code>$("pre").append(...);</code> to do this.
  The problem is that after the highlighting, on the screen I see <code>&amp;lt;</code> instead of <code>&lt;</code>.
  How can I convert these characters back to html?</p>