What are the best practices for handling code representation in a PHP editor to avoid unwanted character masking?

When handling code representation in a PHP editor, it is important to avoid unwanted character masking that may occur when using special characters such as quotes or backslashes in strings. To prevent this issue, you can use the PHP heredoc or nowdoc syntax to represent strings without the need for escaping special characters.

// Example of using heredoc syntax to avoid character masking
$unmaskedString = <<<EOT
This is a string with "quotes" and backslashes \.
No need to escape special characters here.
EOT;

echo $unmaskedString;