What are some best practices for handling arrays and extracting data from complex string structures in PHP?

When handling arrays in PHP, it is important to use built-in functions like array_map, array_filter, and array_reduce to manipulate and extract data efficiently. When dealing with complex string structures, regular expressions can be used to extract specific information. It is also helpful to break down the string into smaller, more manageable parts using functions like explode or substr.

// Example of extracting data from a complex string structure
$string = "Name: John Doe, Age: 30, Occupation: Developer";

// Extracting name
preg_match('/Name: (.*?),/', $string, $matches);
$name = $matches[1];

// Extracting age
preg_match('/Age: (.*?),/', $string, $matches);
$age = $matches[1];

// Extracting occupation
preg_match('/Occupation: (.*$)/', $string, $matches);
$occupation = $matches[1];

echo "Name: $name, Age: $age, Occupation: $occupation";