How can PHP developers handle the issue of counting characters, especially when dealing with special characters like umlauts?

When counting characters in PHP, especially when dealing with special characters like umlauts, developers should use the mb_strlen() function instead of strlen(). mb_strlen() is a multibyte-safe alternative that can accurately count characters, including special characters, in a string.

// Using mb_strlen() to count characters, including special characters like umlauts
$string = "Möglichkeit";
$character_count = mb_strlen($string, 'UTF-8');
echo $character_count; // Output: 11