How to put correct php encoding?

Question

PHP

Hello, please tell me how to set the encoding when writing a php file with a script. The script itself is in utf-8, the file from which the script draws utf-8 information, when creating a .txt file from the script, it is created in the Mac encoding. When changing it to utf-8 and then overwriting the file from the script, the system swears that The UTF-8 file “href.php” is damaged or incorrectly formed; please proceed with caution. (the .php extension is just for example, .txt says the same but doesn't open). Googled a lot, nothing helps, I no longer know how to solve this seemingly not very difficult problem. I tried to encode in utf-8 the variable itself, which is written to the file - it gets even worse. Also, when I load a line from a file, for example, "Metro Novogireevo" - the last "o" becomes a rhombus with a question mark,
In general, please help, I broke my whole head
. In general, for some reason, I have an eternal problem with these encodings, that in other programming languages, that when accessing the database ...

Answer 1

Good afternoon.
What is the server encoding?
Bring everything to one encoding and you will be happy)))