wp-includes/formatting.php:2491Converts lone & characters into & (a.k.a. &)
$contentstring$deprecatedstringoptional''stringfunction convert_chars( $content, $deprecated = '' ) { if ( ! empty( $deprecated ) ) { _deprecated_argument( __FUNCTION__, '0.71' ); } if ( str_contains( $content, '&' ) ) { $content = preg_replace( '/&([^#])(?![a-z1-4]{1,8};)/i', '&$1', $content ); } return $content;}Introduced in 0.71. Unchanged from 6.7.7 through 7.1.0.
Signature, return type and hooks compared across 5 parsed releases.
src/wp-includes/formatting.php, and regenerated for each WordPress release so it tracks the code rather than a snapshot of it.