What are the best practices for string manipulation in PHP to avoid unnecessary complexity and improve code readability?

When manipulating strings in PHP, it's important to use built-in functions and methods to avoid unnecessary complexity and improve code readability. Functions like `strlen()`, `substr()`, `str_replace()`, and `implode()` can help simplify string manipulation tasks. Additionally, using concatenation (`.`) instead of complex string interpolation can make the code easier to understand.

// Example of using built-in functions for string manipulation
$string = "Hello, World!";
$length = strlen($string);
$substring = substr($string, 0, 5);
$newString = str_replace("Hello", "Hi", $string);
$words = explode(", ", $string);

echo $length . "\n"; // Output: 13
echo $substring . "\n"; // Output: Hello
echo $newString . "\n"; // Output: Hi, World!
print_r($words); // Output: Array ( [0] => Hello [1] => World! )