What are the potential issues with using UTF-8 encoding but still encoding special characters like umlauts in PHP code?

The potential issue with using UTF-8 encoding but still encoding special characters like umlauts in PHP code is that it can lead to inconsistency and confusion. To solve this issue, it's recommended to directly use the special characters in the PHP code without encoding them.

<?php
// Use special characters directly in PHP code
$umlaut = 'ü';
echo $umlaut;
?>