How can unnecessary characters like "?>" and "<?" be efficiently removed from PHP code?

Unnecessary characters like "?>" and "<?" can be efficiently removed from PHP code by simply omitting the closing PHP tag "?>" at the end of the file. This ensures that there are no stray characters outside of the PHP code block, which can prevent unintended output or errors in the code.

&lt;?php
// Your PHP code here
// No closing PHP tag needed