force html entity to display although encoding is enabled
<p>i couldn't find a relevant question to this, so ill try my luck here. 
There is a closed source software, written in php that sanitizes html entities (i think using htmlspecialchars();). It is therefore not possible to display entities as <code>&amp;nbsp;</code>. The software tries to split strings using spaces. Therefore the non-breaking space should not affect the splitting process and i would be able to write <code>string1&amp;nbsp;string2</code> and it should be interpreted as one word. Reality is, the sanitizing encodes the non-breaking space and does not allow the interpretation of it. </p>

<p>Is it possible to bypass the sanitizing of a html entity (maybe using an utf8 character) to display the non-breaking space instead of <code>&amp;nbsp;</code>?</p>

<p>i only can input string values and dont have the option to modify the source.</p>