What potential issues can arise when passing special characters like "+" in PHP and how can they be handled effectively?

When passing special characters like "+" in PHP, one potential issue that can arise is that the character may be interpreted as a space or as part of the URL encoding, leading to unexpected behavior. To handle this effectively, you can use the urlencode() function to properly encode the special characters before passing them in the URL.

$special_character = "+";
$encoded_character = urlencode($special_character);

// Use $encoded_character in your URL parameter to ensure proper handling of special characters