What are some common pitfalls when handling large numbers in PHP scripts, and how can they be avoided?

One common pitfall when handling large numbers in PHP scripts is running into integer overflow issues when performing arithmetic operations on numbers that exceed the maximum integer size. This can lead to unexpected results or errors in your script. To avoid this, you can use the BCMath extension in PHP, which allows for arbitrary precision arithmetic.

// Example of using BCMath extension to handle large numbers
$largeNumber1 = '123456789012345678901234567890';
$largeNumber2 = '987654321098765432109876543210';

$result = bcadd($largeNumber1, $largeNumber2);
echo $result;