how do you make html tags NOT parse?

[sajsemegaloma]

i'm sure there's a simple answer to this, i just don't know it, and can't find it anywhere either.

If the database field has (might have rather) a mixture of text and tags in it, and i want to display it on a page, but without the risk that someone might post some script or whatever (it's one of those "leave a comment" pages), how do i do this?

[suntra]

See the strip_tags() function...

[laserlight]

you could also use htmlspecialchars(), depending on your need.