title: Converting PHP escape codes
body: <p>I'm using simplexml to read the contents of an utf-8 XML source.</p>
  
  <p>The source contains escaped characters like the French E...</p>
  
  <pre><code>15 THE AVENUE EXAMPLE CL&amp;#201;MENCEAU
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I'm saving it to a variable like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$shipping_street1 = (string) $order-&gt;{'shipping-address'}-&gt;address1;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>That works fine but the French E gets mangled to:</p>
  
  <pre><code>15 THE AVENUE EXAMPLE CLÃ‰MENCEAU
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And I need to write the values to a plain old text file. I though about just replacing the text with a plain E but thought there must be a better solution. Any help appreciated :)</p>