The example for "htmlspecialchars_decode()" below sadly does not work for all PHP4 versions.

Quote from the PHP manual:
"get_html_translation_table() will return the translation table that is used internally for htmlspecialchars() and htmlentities()."

But it does NOT! At least not for PHP version 4.4.2.
This was already reported in a bug report (http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=25927), but it was marked as BOGUS.

Proof:
  Code:
--------------------
<?php
    var_dump(get_html_translation_table(HTML_SPECIALCHARS,ENT_QUOTES));
    var_dump(htmlspecialchars('\'',ENT_QUOTES));
?>
--------------------

  Output:
--------------------
array
  '"' => '&quot;'
  ''' => '&#39;'
  '<' => '&lt;'
  '>' => '&gt;'
  '&' => '&amp;'

'&#039;'
--------------------

This comment now is not to report this bug again (though I really believe it is one), but to complete the example and warn people of this pitfall.

To make sure your htmlspecialchars_decode fake for PHP4 works, you should do something like this:

<?php
    function htmlspecialchars_decode($string,$style=ENT_COMPAT)
    {
        $translation = array_flip(get_html_translation_table(HTML_SPECIALCHARS,$style));
        if($style === ENT_QUOTES){ $translation['&#039;'] = '\''; }
        return strtr($string,$translation);
    }
?>

Br, Thomas