How can PHP beginners improve their understanding of character sets, collations, and encoding to prevent errors and inconsistencies in their code?

To improve their understanding of character sets, collations, and encoding in PHP, beginners can start by familiarizing themselves with the basics of Unicode, UTF-8, and different encoding standards. They should also pay attention to setting the correct character set and collation in their database connections and ensuring that their PHP files are saved in the appropriate encoding. Regularly testing their code with different languages and special characters can help prevent errors and inconsistencies.

// Set the character set and collation for the database connection
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
$conn->set_charset("utf8mb4");
$conn->query("SET collation_connection = utf8mb4_unicode_ci");