How can PHP developers ensure that the regex pattern does not replace more than intended in a text?

To ensure that the regex pattern does not replace more than intended in a text, PHP developers can use word boundaries (\b) in their regex pattern. Word boundaries ensure that the pattern matches only whole words and not partial matches within words.

$text = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
$pattern = "/\bfox\b/";
$replacement = "cat";
$result = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $text);

echo $result;