What are the potential consequences of having extra spaces or characters before the PHP opening tag in a script, as seen in the forum thread?

Having extra spaces or characters before the PHP opening tag can cause the PHP script to output unexpected characters or errors, as the PHP interpreter may not recognize the opening tag correctly. To solve this issue, ensure that there are no characters or spaces before the PHP opening tag <?php in your script.

&lt;?php
// Your PHP code here
?&gt;