What are common pitfalls when comparing dates in PHP, especially when using strtotime() with different date formats?

When comparing dates in PHP, a common pitfall is using strtotime() with different date formats, which can lead to unexpected results or errors. To avoid this issue, it's important to ensure that the date formats are consistent when using strtotime() for comparison. One way to solve this is by explicitly converting both dates to a common format before comparing them.

$date1 = "2022-01-01";
$date2 = "01/01/2022";

// Convert both dates to a common format (Y-m-d)
$date1_formatted = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($date1));
$date2_formatted = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($date2));

// Compare the dates
if ($date1_formatted == $date2_formatted) {
    echo "Dates are the same";
} else {
    echo "Dates are different";
}