HTML Hearts

I’m trying to edit the kses file to allow me to include hearts “<3” in the comments, so far i have managed to get it to display <3> when you type <3 i’m not trying to edit this function:

function wp_kses_split($string, $allowed_html, $allowed_protocols)
###############################################################################
# This function searches for HTML tags, no matter how malformed. It also
# matches stray ">" characters.
###############################################################################
{
return preg_replace('%(<'.# EITHER: <
'[^>]*'.# things that aren't >
'(>|$)'.# > or end of string
'|>)%e', # OR: just a >
"wp_kses_split2('\\1', \$allowed_html, ".'$allowed_protocols)', $string);
} # function wp_kses_split

so that it doesn’t add the > to the end any one got any helpful suggestions?