How to use htmlspecialchars in preg_match

Question

This is my code, it will echo "Not working"

    $f = file_get_contents("http://www.google.com");
    $text = htmlspecialchars( $f );

        $matches = array();
        preg_match('@<a.*?</a>@s', $text, $matches);
        if ($matches) {
            $text2 = $matches[0];
            echo $text2;
        }
        else {
            echo "Not working";
        }

If I made a variable:

$text = '<a href="http://www.google.com">Google</a> is your best friend!';

This will work somehow, but it wont when I take it from the:

$text = htmlspecialchars( $f );

Anyone knows why?

Answer 1

This is because htmlspecialchars translates all special characters <&>"', etc into html entities (e.g., & becomes &). Thus your match fails.