How should developers handle context switching correctly when manipulating input data in PHP?

When manipulating input data in PHP, developers should handle context switching correctly to prevent security vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting attacks. One way to do this is by using functions like htmlspecialchars() to escape special characters in the input data before displaying it to users. This helps to ensure that any potentially malicious code is rendered harmless.

$input_data = $_POST['input_data'];
$clean_data = htmlspecialchars($input_data, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
echo $clean_data;