How does the header("Location: ...") function in PHP affect the handling of sessions and why might it cause unexpected behavior?

When using the header("Location: ...") function in PHP to redirect a user to another page, it can cause unexpected behavior with sessions because the redirection can happen before the session data is properly saved. To solve this issue, you can use the session_write_close() function before the header() function to ensure that the session data is saved before the redirection occurs.

<?php
session_start();

// Perform any session-related operations

session_write_close(); // Save session data before redirection

header("Location: new_page.php");
exit;
?>