What are best practices for preventing Smileys from being inserted within [php][/php] tags in PHP forums?

To prevent Smileys from being inserted within [php][/php] tags in PHP forums, one best practice is to use the htmlspecialchars function to escape any special characters, including Smileys, before displaying the content within the [php][/php] tags. 

$content = "[php]echo 'Hello :)';[/php]";
$content = preg_replace_callback('/\[php\].*?\[\/php\]/s', function($matches){
    return htmlspecialchars($matches[0]);
}, $content);

echo $content;

Keywords

PHP forums smileys prevention tags

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