What are some best practices for handling directory recognition in PHP scripts?

When working with directories in PHP scripts, it is important to handle directory recognition properly to ensure that the script can accurately locate and interact with the desired directories. One best practice is to use the `is_dir()` function to check if a given path is a directory before attempting to perform any operations on it. This helps prevent errors and ensures that the script behaves as expected.

$directory = '/path/to/directory';

if (is_dir($directory)) {
    // Directory exists, perform operations here
    echo "Directory exists!";
} else {
    // Directory does not exist
    echo "Directory does not exist!";
}