In the context of the forum thread, what best practices can be recommended for comparing strings in PHP to avoid unexpected results and errors?

When comparing strings in PHP, it's important to use the strict comparison operator (===) instead of the loose comparison operator (==) to avoid unexpected results and errors. This is because the loose comparison operator can perform type juggling, which may lead to unintended comparisons. By using the strict comparison operator, both the values and types of the strings are compared accurately.

$string1 = "10";
$string2 = 10;

if ($string1 === $string2) {
    echo "The strings are identical.";
} else {
    echo "The strings are not identical.";
}