What are some common pitfalls when trying to change output values in PHP?

One common pitfall when trying to change output values in PHP is not properly escaping or sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. To prevent this, always sanitize and validate user input before using it in output functions like echo or print. 

// Example of properly escaping user input before outputting it
$userInput = "<script>alert('XSS attack!')</script>";
$escapedInput = htmlspecialchars($userInput);
echo $escapedInput;

Keywords

PHP output values manipulation errors debugging

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