How to handle css entities in locators and text

What are entities in web ?

Entity - MDN Web Docs Glossary: Definitions of Web-related terms | MDN

An HTML entity is a piece of text (“string”) that begins with an ampersand (&) and ends with a semicolon (;). Entities are frequently used to display reserved characters (which would otherwise be interpreted as HTML code), and invisible characters (like non-breaking spaces). You can also use them in place of other characters that are difficult to type with a standard keyboard.

some examples would be :

Problem…..:

Imagine you have a element like:

<div data="Praveen&nbsp;Mathew">Praveen&nbsp;Mathew</div>

how do we detect this element using data attribute and verify the text content ?

1. can we use the css locator ? [data=”Praveen Mathew”] ?
2. can we use the css locator ? [data=”Praveen Mathew”] ?