How can whitespace and error reporting impact the functionality of the header function in PHP?

Whitespace and error reporting can impact the functionality of the header function in PHP by causing headers to be sent prematurely, resulting in errors such as "headers already sent" or "cannot modify header information." To solve this issue, make sure there is no whitespace before the opening <?php tag and that error reporting is set to display errors only, not warnings or notices.

&lt;?php
error_reporting(E_ERROR | E_PARSE);

// Your PHP code here