Php - Htmlspecialchars And Utf-8

I am just trying to confirm something with htmlspecialchars. I have just converted my database into UTF-8, and I think I finally have it all working, but throughout my code I have

Solution 1:

All characters "handled" by htmlspecialchars() are in the 7-bit/US ASCII range. And those are identical (and unmistakable) in the mentioned encodings. So yes, it will do no harm if you don't change the encoding parameter. But I'd encourage you to do so anyway.