What are the potential pitfalls of manipulating variable content in PHP, such as removing or adding characters?

When manipulating variable content in PHP, such as removing or adding characters, it's important to be cautious as it can lead to unintended consequences. One potential pitfall is altering the original data in a way that changes its meaning or causes errors in the program. To avoid this, always make a copy of the original variable before manipulating its content. 

// Example of safely manipulating variable content by creating a copy
$originalString = "Hello, World!";
$modifiedString = $originalString; // Create a copy of the original variable

// Manipulate the copied variable
$modifiedString = str_replace(",", "", $modifiedString); // Remove comma from the copied string

echo $originalString; // Output: Hello, World!
echo $modifiedString; // Output: Hello World!

Keywords

PHP variable manipulation character removal character addition data validation

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