What are some best practices for manipulating arrays in PHP to avoid data loss or unexpected behavior?

When manipulating arrays in PHP, it is crucial to handle data carefully to avoid data loss or unexpected behavior. One common issue is accidentally overwriting existing array elements when adding new ones. To prevent this, you can use functions like array_push() to safely add elements to an array without affecting existing data.

// Example of using array_push() to safely add elements to an array
$myArray = [1, 2, 3];

// Add a new element to the end of the array
array_push($myArray, 4);

print_r($myArray);