Are there any best practices or recommended functions in PHP for handling string manipulation and array conversion?

When handling string manipulation and array conversion in PHP, it is recommended to use built-in functions to ensure efficiency and accuracy. For string manipulation, functions like `substr`, `str_replace`, and `explode` can be used to modify strings as needed. When converting arrays, functions like `implode`, `json_encode`, and `json_decode` can help in converting arrays to strings and vice versa.

// Example of string manipulation using substr and str_replace
$string = "Hello, World!";
$substring = substr($string, 0, 5); // Output: "Hello"
$new_string = str_replace("Hello", "Hi", $string); // Output: "Hi, World!"

// Example of array conversion using implode and json_encode
$array = ["apple", "banana", "cherry"];
$string_array = implode(", ", $array); // Output: "apple, banana, cherry"
$json_string = json_encode($array); // Output: '["apple","banana","cherry"]'