How does PHP handle the creation of independent copies of arrays, and what implications does this have for data manipulation?

In PHP, when you assign an array to a new variable or pass it as a function argument, it creates a reference to the original array rather than an independent copy. This can lead to unintended side effects when manipulating the data, as changes made to the new array will also affect the original array. To create an independent copy of an array in PHP, you can use the `array_slice()` function with no length parameter specified.

$originalArray = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
$independentCopy = array_slice($originalArray, 0);