What are some best practices for using regex in PHP to avoid replacing unintended parts of a text?

When using regex in PHP, it's important to be specific with your pattern to avoid replacing unintended parts of a text. One way to do this is by using word boundaries (\b) to match whole words instead of partial matches. Additionally, using anchors (^ and $) can help ensure that the pattern is only applied at the beginning or end of a string.

$text = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
$pattern = "/\bfox\b/";
$replacement = "cat";
$result = preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, $text);

echo $result;