What are the best practices for handling automatic type conversion in PHP when using functions like strpos()?

When using functions like strpos() in PHP, it's important to handle automatic type conversion properly to avoid unexpected results. To ensure accurate searching, always explicitly convert variables to the expected types (string or integer) before passing them to the function. This can be done using type casting or other conversion functions to maintain data integrity.

// Example of handling automatic type conversion with strpos()
$haystack = "Hello, World!";
$needle = 0; // needle is an integer
$needle = (string) $needle; // convert needle to string before using strpos()
$position = strpos($haystack, $needle);
if ($position !== false) {
    echo "Needle found at position: " . $position;
} else {
    echo "Needle not found";
}