How can functions like mb_detect_encoding() be used effectively to determine the character encoding of strings in PHP?

To determine the character encoding of strings in PHP, functions like mb_detect_encoding() can be used effectively. This function analyzes a string and returns the detected character encoding. It is useful when dealing with multibyte encodings like UTF-8, UTF-16, etc.

$string = "Hello, 你好, नमस्ते";
$encoding = mb_detect_encoding($string);
echo "The detected encoding is: " . $encoding;