How can the user ensure that only a single character is stored in the $status variable in the PHP script?

To ensure that only a single character is stored in the $status variable in the PHP script, the user can use the substr() function to limit the input to only the first character. This way, even if the user enters a longer string, only the first character will be stored in the variable.

// Limit the input to only one character
$status = substr($_POST['status'], 0, 1);