What are some best practices for handling text manipulation and formatting in PHP to avoid complex and error-prone code like the one discussed in the forum thread?

Complex and error-prone code for text manipulation and formatting in PHP can be avoided by using built-in functions and libraries specifically designed for these tasks. One approach is to utilize functions like `trim()`, `strtolower()`, `ucwords()`, `str_replace()`, and `preg_replace()` to manipulate and format text efficiently. Additionally, using regular expressions can help simplify complex text manipulation tasks.

// Example of using PHP built-in functions for text manipulation and formatting
$text = "   Hello, WORLD!   ";
$cleanedText = trim(strtolower($text)); // Remove leading/trailing spaces and convert to lowercase
$formattedText = ucwords($cleanedText); // Capitalize the first letter of each word
echo $formattedText;