What are common pitfalls for beginners when using PHP?

One common pitfall for beginners when using PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To solve this issue, always validate and sanitize user input before using it in your code.

// Example of sanitizing user input using the filter_var function
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];
$sanitized_input = filter_var($user_input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);