What are the potential pitfalls of using explode() function in PHP to separate values from a string?

One potential pitfall of using the explode() function in PHP to separate values from a string is that it may not handle empty values correctly. If the delimiter appears consecutively in the string, explode() would consider the empty string between delimiters as a separate value. To solve this issue, you can use the preg_split() function with a regex pattern that handles consecutive delimiters and empty values properly.

$string = "apple,,banana,,orange";
$values = preg_split('/,+/', $string, -1, PREG_SPLIT_NO_EMPTY);
print_r($values);