How can the placement of text affect the results of regular expressions in PHP?

The placement of text can affect the results of regular expressions in PHP because the position of the text within the string can impact whether the pattern matches or not. To ensure accurate results, it is important to consider the position of the text when writing regular expressions.

// Example of using the \b anchor to match whole words only
$text = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
$pattern = "/\bfox\b/";
if (preg_match($pattern, $text)) {
    echo "Match found!";
} else {
    echo "No match found.";
}