What are the potential pitfalls of using regular expressions to manipulate XML data in PHP?

Using regular expressions to manipulate XML data in PHP can be error-prone and difficult to maintain, as XML is a complex hierarchical structure that is best handled with specialized XML parsing libraries like SimpleXML or DOMDocument. These libraries provide easier and safer ways to navigate and modify XML data, ensuring proper handling of namespaces, attributes, and nested elements. 

// Example of using SimpleXML to manipulate XML data
$xml = simplexml_load_string($xmlString);

// Accessing and modifying XML elements using SimpleXML
$xml->book[0]->title = "New Title";
$xml->book[0]->author = "New Author";

// Converting SimpleXML object back to XML string
$newXmlString = $xml->asXML();

Keywords

regular expressions XML data manipulation PHP pitfalls

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