What are some best practices for handling IF statements in PHP to avoid unexpected outcomes?

When handling IF statements in PHP, it is important to use strict comparison operators (=== and !==) to avoid unexpected outcomes due to type coercion. Additionally, it is recommended to always use curly braces {} even for single-line IF statements to improve code readability and avoid potential bugs.

// Incorrect way of handling IF statement
if ($var == 1) 
    echo "Variable is equal to 1";

// Correct way of handling IF statement
if ($var === 1) {
    echo "Variable is strictly equal to 1";
}