Are there any security concerns to be aware of when renaming files with placeholders in PHP?

When renaming files with placeholders in PHP, it is important to be cautious of user input to prevent security vulnerabilities such as directory traversal attacks. To mitigate this risk, always sanitize and validate user input before using it in file operations. 

// Sanitize and validate user input before renaming files
$userInput = $_POST['file_name'];
$cleanFileName = preg_replace('/[^a-zA-Z0-9_.]/', '', $userInput); // Remove any characters that are not alphanumeric, underscore, or dot

// Rename file using sanitized input
if (rename('old_file.txt', $cleanFileName . '.txt')) {
    echo 'File renamed successfully.';
} else {
    echo 'Error renaming file.';
}

Keywords

PHP file renaming security concerns placeholders file manipulation

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