In what scenarios or situations would utilizing connected variables in PHP be more efficient or practical than other methods of variable manipulation?

Using connected variables in PHP can be more efficient and practical when you need to concatenate multiple variables or strings together to form a single value. This can be useful when constructing dynamic content, such as building URLs or SQL queries, or when outputting complex data structures. By connecting variables, you can avoid repetitive concatenation operations and make your code more concise and easier to read.

// Using connected variables to construct a dynamic URL
$base_url = "https://example.com/";
$page = "products";
$query_params = "category=electronics";
$url = $base_url . $page . "?" . $query_params;

echo $url;