How can HTML display in browsers affect the behavior of PHP functions like str_replace and preg_replace?

When HTML is displayed in browsers, special characters like < and > can be interpreted as HTML tags rather than as part of the PHP code. This can cause issues with PHP functions like str_replace and preg_replace if they are trying to replace those characters. To solve this issue, you can use the htmlspecialchars function to encode the special characters before using them in PHP functions. 

$text = &quot;This is a &lt;b&gt;bold&lt;/b&gt; text.&quot;;
$find = &quot;&lt;b&gt;&quot;;
$replace = &quot;&lt;strong&gt;&quot;;

$text = htmlspecialchars($text, ENT_QUOTES, &#039;UTF-8&#039;);
$result = str_replace($find, $replace, $text);

echo $result;

Keywords

HTML browsers PHP functions str_replace preg_replace

Related Questions