Why do computers sometimes change special characters like “&” into “&” or “ ”

Question

Why do computers sometimes change special characters like “&” into “&” or “ ”

In: 77

Answer 1

This happens because of a bug in the software being used. The content has been “double escaped”

In the code that is used to generate webpages (HTML) the & character is used in a special way that tells the browser to render specific characters. ` ` for example is a code that tells the browser to render a space character that cannot be used as a break point for word-wrapping and multiples cannot be collapsed together. Because the & is used for these special codes, if you want to write an actual & character, you need to use a special code for it which is `&`

When you see these codes in the text rather than what they are supposed to represent, that is a result of the software double-processing. For example, the first time it processes the text it converts & into `&`. The second time, it converts `&` into `&`. Your browser then renders the `&` as & followed by the amp;