What are the potential pitfalls of manually inserting data into a serialized string in PHP?

One potential pitfall of manually inserting data into a serialized string in PHP is the risk of syntax errors or improperly formatted data, which can lead to serialization or unserialization issues. To avoid this, it's recommended to use PHP's built-in `serialize()` and `unserialize()` functions to handle data serialization and deserialization in a safe and reliable manner. 

$data = ['key' => 'value'];

// Serialize data using PHP's built-in function
$serialized_data = serialize($data);

// Unserialize data using PHP's built-in function
$unserialized_data = unserialize($serialized_data);

// Output unserialized data
var_dump($unserialized_data);

Keywords

serialization unserialize data corruption security vulnerability PHP injection

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