How can PHP developers ensure consistent handling of time zones across different environments when working with date and time functions?

To ensure consistent handling of time zones across different environments when working with date and time functions in PHP, developers should set the default time zone explicitly at the beginning of their scripts using the `date_default_timezone_set()` function. This ensures that all date and time functions use the specified time zone regardless of the server's default settings. 

// Set the default time zone to UTC
date_default_timezone_set('UTC');

// Now all date and time functions will use UTC time zone
echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Keywords

time zones PHP date functions environment consistency

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