import html
import xml.sax.saxutils as saxutils

print(saxutils.unescape("&reghard"))  # &reghard
print(html.unescape("&reghard"))  # ®hard



html.unescape() replace "&reg" to "®" even without ";" at the end.

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XML_and_HTML_character_entity_references#cite_ref-semicolon_1-64 the trailing semicolon can be omitted for the named entity "reg". That means "&reg" and "®" are equivalent.

saxutils.unescape() only handles '<', '>', and '&' by default. You have to pass in a dictionary to unescape other entities.

Concur with Christian. It works as designed, in accordance to the standard.