What alternative function can be used in PHP to format a date stored in a variable before passing it to the date() function?

When formatting a date stored in a variable before passing it to the date() function in PHP, the strtotime() function can be used to convert the date string into a Unix timestamp. This Unix timestamp can then be passed to the date() function for formatting. This approach ensures that the date is in a standardized format before formatting it for display.

$date_string = "2022-12-31";
$timestamp = strtotime($date_string);
$formatted_date = date("Y-m-d", $timestamp);

echo $formatted_date;