What are some potential pitfalls when using variable variables in PHP?

One potential pitfall when using variable variables in PHP is the risk of creating unpredictable variable names, leading to confusion and errors in your code. To avoid this, it is important to carefully manage and validate the variable names being used as variable variables. 

// Example of using variable variables safely by validating the variable name
$variableName = 'userInput';
if (preg_match('/^[a-zA-Z_\x7f-\xff][a-zA-Z0-9_\x7f-\xff]*$/', $variableName)) {
    $$variableName = 'Value assigned to dynamic variable';
} else {
    echo 'Invalid variable name';
}

Keywords

variable variables PHP security vulnerabilities dynamic variable names code readability

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