How can PHP handle special characters or encoding discrepancies when reading text files?

When handling special characters or encoding discrepancies in text files, PHP can use functions like `mb_convert_encoding()` to convert the text to a desired encoding. This function can help ensure that special characters are correctly interpreted and displayed. Additionally, using the `fopen()` function with appropriate mode settings can help PHP read text files with different encodings.

$file = 'example.txt';
$handle = fopen($file, 'r');
$content = fread($handle, filesize($file));
$content = mb_convert_encoding($content, 'UTF-8', 'auto');
fclose($handle);

echo $content;