making exceptions to htmlspecialchars()

[Anon]

Hello there

I have a system that I use to add html tutorials to my website. The writer can type the tutorial into a text area box, then add it to a database. Because they are html tutorials, I use the htmlspecialchars function so readers can see what the tags look like. (When the tutorial is accessed from the database by a reader, the nl2br function is run to insert paragraph and line breaks)

HOWEVER: I need to also be able to show the effects of certain in certain places. When I run htmlspecialchars though, ALL the flags are "destroyed" so they won't execute in the browser. I need to devise a system whereby I can enclose certain tags in quotes (or something along those lines) so they are ignored by the htmlspecialchars function.

any ideas?

thanks in advance.