What are the best practices for formatting specific words within a string in PHP?

When formatting specific words within a string in PHP, one common approach is to use regular expressions to identify and modify the targeted words. Regular expressions allow for pattern matching within a string, making it easy to find and replace specific words with desired formatting. By using regular expressions, you can dynamically format specific words within a string based on your requirements.

$string = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog";
$wordToFormat = "fox";
$formattedWord = "<b>$wordToFormat</b>";

$formattedString = preg_replace("/\b$wordToFormat\b/", $formattedWord, $string);

echo $formattedString;