What are some common pitfalls when using regular expressions in PHP to manipulate text?

One common pitfall when using regular expressions in PHP to manipulate text is not properly escaping special characters. This can lead to unexpected results or errors in the regex pattern. To solve this issue, use the preg_quote() function to escape special characters before using them in the regex pattern. 

$text = "Hello, world!";
$pattern = "/world/";
$escaped_pattern = preg_quote($pattern, "/");
if (preg_match($escaped_pattern, $text)) {
    echo "Pattern found in text!";
} else {
    echo "Pattern not found in text.";
}

Keywords

Regular expressions PHP text manipulation errors patterns

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