[htmlentitydefs.name2codepoint.get(y,y) for y in [x[1] or x[2] for x in re.findall('(&([^;]+);|([^&]))', a)]]

result = []

for x in _:

    if isinstance(x, int): result.append(chr(x))

    else: result.append(x)





''.join(result)

htmlentitydefs.codepoint2name[ord('&')]