What are the potential pitfalls of using textareas for searching and outputting data in PHP?

Using textareas for searching and outputting data in PHP can lead to potential security vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks if the input is not properly sanitized. To mitigate this risk, always sanitize and validate the input data before using it in your PHP code. 

// Sanitize and validate input data from a textarea
$search_query = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'search_query', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Output the sanitized data
echo $search_query;

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textareas searching outputting data PHP pitfalls

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