What version of PHP is recommended for handling special characters in text processing?

Special characters in text processing can be properly handled by using PHP version 7.2 or higher, as these versions have improved support for Unicode and special characters. To ensure that special characters are processed correctly, it is recommended to use the mbstring extension in PHP, which provides multibyte specific string functions that can handle special characters effectively.

// Set the internal encoding to UTF-8
mb_internal_encoding('UTF-8');

// Convert a string to uppercase with mb_strtoupper
$text = "héllø wörld";
$uppercaseText = mb_strtoupper($text);

echo $uppercaseText;