You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but is unsuitable for application use.
Specify the format parameter to change the output format.
To see the non HTML representation of the XML format, set format=xml.
See the complete documentation, or API help for more information.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <query>
    <search>
      <p ns="0" title="Unix Permissions" snippet="Directories also can get the same rwx permissions, though the &lt;span class=&#039;searchmatch&#039;&gt;meaning&lt;/span&gt; is slightly different. If you have read permission on a directory, you can &#10;" size="9063" wordcount="1566" timestamp="2021-01-19T17:55:08Z" />
    </search>
  </query>
</api>