What are the best practices for handling email attachments in PHP scripts to avoid errors like "Could not access file"?

When handling email attachments in PHP scripts, it is important to ensure that the file paths are correctly specified and accessible. To avoid errors like "Could not access file," it is recommended to use absolute file paths and check for file existence before attempting to access or process the attachment.

// Example code snippet to handle email attachments in PHP
$attachment_path = '/path/to/attachment/file.txt';

// Check if the file exists before accessing it
if (file_exists($attachment_path)) {
    // Process the attachment here
    $attachment_data = file_get_contents($attachment_path);
    
    // Additional processing code
} else {
    echo "Error: Could not access file.";
}