What are the implications of nesting functions like stripslashes and htmlspecialchars in PHP code, and how can this impact code readability and maintainability?

Nesting functions like stripslashes and htmlspecialchars in PHP code can make the code harder to read and maintain, as it can be difficult to understand the order in which the functions are being applied. To improve readability and maintainability, it's better to apply these functions separately to avoid confusion.

// Separate the application of stripslashes and htmlspecialchars for better readability and maintainability
$input = "Example input with 'quotes' and <html> tags";
$stripped_input = stripslashes($input);
$sanitized_input = htmlspecialchars($stripped_input, ENT_QUOTES);