I’m getting strange symbols whenever I try and echo the Euro symbol (€) from PHP (in a plugin) it displays as garbage, yet it works fine in EE.  Would this have something to do with the default characterset in php.ini, and if so, why doesn’t it effect EE (which I assumed, also uses PHP to render the templates...)

I wrote the plugin myself, and it just uses $r="€" . $some_variable) and then returns it at the end of the function.

rather, here is a shortened example of what I’m doing:

function for_class() // would be EE tag exp:classname:for_class
{
$r=$r . “ some stuff to be displayed in the template”;
$r=$r . “€” . $this->calculate_something;
return $r;
}

Note: this is just simplified, and showing a chunk of the actual function I’m using.

Check your character set, perhaps it’s not correctly setup?

That’s what I thought, too, but wouldn’t that effect EE as well?  I’ll check and change it and see if that works.