What are the potential pitfalls of using urlencode and utf8_decode functions in PHP for encoding special characters?

The potential pitfall of using urlencode and utf8_decode functions in PHP for encoding special characters is that urlencode does not handle UTF-8 characters properly, leading to incorrect encoding and decoding. To solve this issue, you can use rawurlencode and utf8_encode functions instead.

// Encode special characters using rawurlencode and utf8_encode
$encoded_string = rawurlencode(utf8_encode($original_string));

// Decode special characters using utf8_decode
$decoded_string = utf8_decode($encoded_string);