What are some best practices for handling string manipulation tasks in PHP?

When handling string manipulation tasks in PHP, it is important to use built-in functions and methods to efficiently manipulate strings. Some best practices include using functions like `strlen()` to get the length of a string, `substr()` to extract a portion of a string, `str_replace()` to replace occurrences of a substring, and `strtolower()` or `strtoupper()` to change the case of a string.

// Example of using string manipulation functions in PHP
$string = "Hello, World!";
$length = strlen($string); // Get the length of the string
$substring = substr($string, 0, 5); // Extract the first 5 characters
$newString = str_replace("Hello", "Hi", $string); // Replace "Hello" with "Hi"
$lowercase = strtolower($string); // Convert the string to lowercase
$uppercase = strtoupper($string); // Convert the string to uppercase