[SOLVED] Is there a way to display html without manually inserting < ect..

[sarathi]

I am looking for a way to automatically replace < and > with < and >, I have tried <xmp> but it seems to pre-format the text, which I don't want. I also have a system which insert html when certain tags are placed in the text, such as [*code*] and [*/code*], and I want the html entered from these to display. Is there any way to do this in html or php?

[sarathi]

nvm, I just discovered htmlspecialchars();