Answers for "Which PHP function converts some special characters into character entities?"

php convert special characters to unicode

<?php
/* Convert internal character encoding to SJIS */
$str = mb_convert_encoding($str, "SJIS");

/* Convert EUC-JP to UTF-7 */
$str = mb_convert_encoding($str, "UTF-7", "EUC-JP");

/* Auto detect encoding from JIS, eucjp-win, sjis-win, then convert str to UCS-2LE */
$str = mb_convert_encoding($str, "UCS-2LE", "JIS, eucjp-win, sjis-win");

/* "auto" is expanded to "ASCII,JIS,UTF-8,EUC-JP,SJIS" */
$str = mb_convert_encoding($str, "EUC-JP", "auto");
?>

php convert special characters to normal

iconv('utf-8', 'ascii//TRANSLIT', $text);