How can PHP code be used to filter out unwanted PHP tags like <?php and ?> when reading and processing data from a PHP file?

When reading and processing data from a PHP file, unwanted PHP tags like <?php and ?> can be filtered out using regular expressions in PHP. By using preg_replace() function, we can remove these tags before further processing the content of the file.

// Read the content of the PHP file
$file_content = file_get_contents('example.php');

// Remove unwanted PHP tags
$filtered_content = preg_replace('/<\?php|\?>/i', '', $file_content);

// Further processing of $filtered_content