How important is it to consider international email address formats and special characters when validating email addresses in PHP?

It is important to consider international email address formats and special characters when validating email addresses in PHP to ensure that all valid email addresses are accepted. This can be done by using the filter_var() function with the FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL flag, which supports international email addresses. Additionally, using regular expressions to validate email addresses can also help handle special characters.

$email = "example@exámple.com";

if (filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    echo "Valid email address";
} else {
    echo "Invalid email address";
}