Is replacing "&" with "&" a common practice to avoid parsing issues in PHP?

Replacing "&" with "&" is a common practice to avoid parsing issues in PHP when dealing with HTML content. This is necessary because "&" is a special character in HTML and can cause parsing errors if not properly encoded. By using "&", we ensure that the HTML parser interprets the character correctly and does not mistakenly treat it as part of a special sequence.

$html_content = "This is a sample text with & symbol";
$encoded_content = str_replace("&", "&", $html_content);
echo $encoded_content;