What are some best practices for handling special characters and encoding in PHP to avoid issues like incorrect output?

Special characters and encoding issues can lead to incorrect output in PHP if not handled properly. To avoid these issues, it is important to use appropriate encoding functions like utf8_encode() or utf8_decode() when dealing with special characters. Additionally, setting the correct character encoding in the HTML meta tag can help ensure that special characters are displayed correctly on the webpage. 

// Example code snippet for handling special characters and encoding in PHP

// Convert special characters to UTF-8 encoding
$encoded_string = utf8_encode($original_string);

// Convert UTF-8 encoded characters back to original encoding
$decoded_string = utf8_decode($encoded_string);

// Set the correct character encoding in the HTML meta tag
<meta charset="UTF-8">

Keywords

htmlspecialchars htmlentities UTF-8 mb_convert_encoding encoding

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