In what ways can hosting providers impact the functionality of PHP scripts, and what steps can developers take to address these issues?

Hosting providers can impact the functionality of PHP scripts by limiting certain PHP functions or configurations, leading to errors or unexpected behavior. To address these issues, developers can check the PHP version, enable necessary extensions, and adjust PHP settings in their code to ensure compatibility with the hosting environment.

// Check PHP version
if (version_compare(PHP_VERSION, '7.0.0') < 0) {
    die('PHP version 7.0.0 or higher is required');
}

// Enable necessary extensions
if (!extension_loaded('mysqli')) {
    die('The mysqli extension is required');
}

// Adjust PHP settings
ini_set('display_errors', 1);
error_reporting(E_ALL);