How can HTML entities affect the functionality of PHP code, and what are best practices for handling them?

HTML entities can affect the functionality of PHP code by causing issues with string comparisons or output formatting. To handle HTML entities properly, it's best practice to use PHP's `html_entity_decode()` function to convert HTML entities back to their corresponding characters before performing any string operations or outputting the data. 

// Example of using html_entity_decode() to handle HTML entities
$encodedString = "<div>Hello, &world&</div>";
$decodedString = html_entity_decode($encodedString);
echo $decodedString;

Keywords

HTML entities PHP code functionality handling best practices

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