How can differences in server environments, such as Windows versus Linux, affect the handling of special characters in MySQL databases accessed by PHP scripts?

Differences in server environments, such as Windows versus Linux, can affect the handling of special characters in MySQL databases accessed by PHP scripts due to variations in character encoding settings. To ensure consistent handling of special characters, it is important to set the appropriate character set and collation for the database connection in your PHP script.

// Set the character set and collation for the database connection
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "username", "password", "database");
$mysqli->set_charset("utf8");