How can PHP mail scripts be optimized to correctly handle special characters in form submissions?

Special characters in form submissions can cause issues with PHP mail scripts if not handled correctly. To optimize PHP mail scripts to handle special characters, you can use the mb_encode_mimeheader function to encode the subject line and headers properly before sending the email.

// Set the subject line and headers with proper encoding for special characters
$subject = 'Subject with special characters';
$subject = mb_encode_mimeheader($subject, 'UTF-8');

$headers = "From: sender@example.com\r\n";
$headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
$headers .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\r\n";

// Send the email with encoded subject line and headers
mail('recipient@example.com', $subject, 'Message body', $headers);