Are there any recommended best practices for handling special characters in PHP scripts?

Special characters in PHP scripts can cause issues such as syntax errors or unexpected behavior. To handle special characters properly, it is recommended to use functions like htmlentities() or htmlspecialchars() to escape the characters before outputting them to the browser. This helps prevent cross-site scripting attacks and ensures that the special characters are displayed correctly on the webpage.

// Example of using htmlspecialchars() to handle special characters
$specialString = "<script>alert('Hello, world!');</script>";
$escapedString = htmlspecialchars($specialString);
echo $escapedString;