That works almost perfectly, jaytea. It doesn't remove & nbsp;, but it does make the line look right. I can more easily handle those non-breaking spaces than the other, even right within the identifier. It is all working great now. Thanks.
Mpdreamz, as you said yourself, it affects performance to jump into COM for something so minor as HTML removal. I do use COM in other scripts, but it's used in cases where there really isn't a better option to get the information that it provides (such as system or Windows information). That said, a DLL would probably still be better in those cases, but I understand COM... I don't really want to try to figure out how to write DLLs right now.
Also, as genius_at_work said, this problem for me gives the option to try and fix the often-used $htmlfree/$nohtml identifiers so they work in more situations. It's much easier for someone to use a widely used HTML removal identifier than to try and find a COM script that does exactly what they need. I admit I wasn't trying to fix it for anyone else, but it's not a bad idea to do so.
So I wasn't ignoring your suggestion. I just felt that I could have less of a performance problem using other methods. I didn't benchmark yours versus others, so maybe it isn't slower than other methods... it just seems like it would be.
