How do side effects impact the use of operators like XOR in PHP code?

Side effects can impact the use of operators like XOR in PHP code by altering the values of variables outside of the intended operation. To avoid this issue, it is important to ensure that the operands used with the XOR operator do not have any side effects that could affect other parts of the code.

$a = 5;
$b = 3;

// Using XOR operator without side effects
$result = $a ^ $b;

echo $result;