What are the potential pitfalls of using loose comparison operators like == in PHP, as seen in the code snippet provided?

Using loose comparison operators like == in PHP can lead to unexpected behavior due to type coercion. This can result in values being compared as equal when they are not actually the same, leading to bugs in your code. To avoid this issue, it's recommended to use strict comparison operators like === which also check for the data type in addition to the value.

// Code snippet with strict comparison operator
$var1 = 5;
$var2 = '5';

if ($var1 === $var2) {
    echo "Equal";
} else {
    echo "Not equal";
}