How can PHP developers efficiently handle the replacement of special characters like @ and # in user input strings?

When handling user input in PHP, it's important to sanitize the data to prevent any security vulnerabilities. One common task is replacing special characters like '@' and '#' to prevent potential injection attacks. This can be efficiently done using PHP's str_replace() function to replace specific characters with desired replacements. 

// Sample user input string
$userInput = "Hello @world! #PHP";

// Replace special characters '@' and '#' with 'AT' and 'HASHTAG'
$sanitizedInput = str_replace(['@', '#'], ['AT', 'HASHTAG'], $userInput);

echo $sanitizedInput;

Keywords

PHP special characters user input string manipulation regex

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