Title: < character breaks shortcode
Last modified: December 21, 2016

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# < character breaks shortcode

 *  [deepthinking](https://wordpress.org/support/users/deeptimani/)
 * (@deeptimani)
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-breaks-shortcode/)
 * My blog is about coding and I created a shortcode to display code in a certain
   format.
    The problem is when I use the character ‘<‘ (as in ‘less than’) inside
   the shortcode content, it seems to be interpret it as html symbol < and totally
   messes up my shortcode.
 * I read online that this was introduced in WordPress with do_shortcodes_in_html_tags
   which parses the content for HTML tags.
 * Is there a way to avoid this feature and display the < character as is in the
   shortcode content?

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

 *  Moderator [Steven Stern (sterndata)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sterndata/)
 * (@sterndata)
 * Volunteer Forum Moderator
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-breaks-shortcode/#post-8577880)
 * If you’re entering that character from the VISUAL side of the editor, it will
   be converted to `<` You could convert it back inside your shortcode or figure
   out a way not to need it when entering the shortcode.
 * (oops… it got converted here. Anyhow…)
    -  This reply was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by [Steven Stern (sterndata)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/sterndata/).
 *  Thread Starter [deepthinking](https://wordpress.org/support/users/deeptimani/)
 * (@deeptimani)
 * [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-breaks-shortcode/#post-8606635)
 * Thanks for your reply. I have Visual Editor disabled. I removed the call to do_shortcodes_in_html_tags
   in do_shortcode and the problem was resolved. But guess that is not the recommended
   solution. For now, I am using &lt instead of <.

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)

The topic ‘< character breaks shortcode’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [shortcode](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/shortcode/)

 * In: [Fixing WordPress](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/how-to-and-troubleshooting/)
 * 2 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [deepthinking](https://wordpress.org/support/users/deeptimani/)
 * Last activity: [9 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/character-breaks-shortcode/#post-8606635)
 * Status: not resolved

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