What are common challenges when converting PHP scripts to UTF-8 encoding?

Common challenges when converting PHP scripts to UTF-8 encoding include handling special characters, ensuring proper encoding declarations, and dealing with encoding inconsistencies between different systems. To solve these issues, it is important to use proper encoding functions like mb_convert_encoding() and utf8_encode() to convert strings to UTF-8.

// Convert a string to UTF-8 encoding using mb_convert_encoding
$utf8_string = mb_convert_encoding($original_string, 'UTF-8', 'auto');

// Convert a string to UTF-8 encoding using utf8_encode
$utf8_string = utf8_encode($original_string);