Need help with tags!

[Shad]

i am entering information into a field in a table, for example 'message'.
this is being entered as htmlspecialchars($message);

What i would like to know is, when selecting this field from the table and "echo"ing it,
bearing in mind that i htmlspecialchars'd it when it was entered, how can i create a secure function to allow certain html tags however in the same time block all other html tags and disable PHP.

Hope you can help!

[Caesar]

[code]
<?php

strip_tags($string, '<b>');

?>[/code]

[Shad]

that does not work with a string that has been applied with htmlspecialchars

[sinisake]

But why you would use htmlspecialchars if you use this function?
???

[Caesar]

[quote author=sinisake link=topic=113646.msg462010#msg462010 date=1162505315]
But why you would use htmlspecialchars if you use this function?
???
[/quote]

Indeed.

I suppose it becomes a question of logic and approach. And what your end goal is in terms of what you want the result to be.