In the context of PHP development, what are some recommended approaches for handling text manipulation tasks, such as counting words or splitting strings efficiently?

When handling text manipulation tasks in PHP, it's important to use built-in functions and methods to efficiently perform operations like counting words or splitting strings. For counting words, you can use the `str_word_count()` function which returns the number of words in a string. To split strings efficiently, you can use the `explode()` function which breaks a string into an array based on a specified delimiter.

// Counting words in a string
$text = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet";
$wordCount = str_word_count($text);
echo $wordCount; // Output: 5

// Splitting a string into an array
$string = "apple,banana,orange";
$fruits = explode(",", $string);
print_r($fruits); // Output: Array ( [0] => apple [1] => banana [2] => orange )