How to execute given htmlspecialchars_decode function?

Question

PHP

How to execute given function in my code:htmlspecialchars_decode

<?php
require_once 'connection.php'; 
 
$link = mysqli_connect($host, $user, $password, $database) 
    or die("Ошибка " . mysqli_error($link)); 
     
$query ="SELECT `id`, `company`, `status_1`, `data_1`, `data_2`, `file`, `summ`, `status_2`, `note`  FROM appcation WHERE 1"; 

$result = mysqli_query($link, $query) or die("Ошибка " . mysqli_error($link)); 
if($result)
{
    $rows = mysqli_num_rows ($result); // количество полученных строк
    for ($i = 0 ; $i < $rows ; ++$i)
 
    {
        $row = mysqli_fetch_row ($result);
        echo "<tr>";
            for ($j = 0 ; $j < 9 ; ++$j) echo "<td>$row[$j]</td>";
        echo "</tr>";
    }
    echo "</table>";
    mysqli_free_result($result);
}
mysqli_close($link);
?>

At the moment, I have links with HTML tags in the database table and they are displayed with the symbols shown in the screenshot and the link becomes not active but in plain text.
I read that this htmlspecialchars_decode function converts these characters into HTML tags and the link becomes habitually active.

Answer 1

In a loop:

echo "<tr>";
for ($j = 0 ; $j < count($row) ; ++$j) {
    echo "<td>";
    echo htmlspecialchars_decode($row[$j]);
    echo "</td>";
}
echo "</tr>";

Answer 2

This function should never be used.
If you need it, you are doing something wrong.