What are the potential pitfalls of using string concatenation in PHP, as seen in the code snippet provided?

Using string concatenation in PHP can lead to inefficient code and potential security vulnerabilities, especially when dealing with user input. It is recommended to use PHP's built-in functions like `implode()` or `sprintf()` for better performance and to prevent SQL injection attacks. Additionally, using prepared statements with PDO or MySQLi can help protect against SQL injection.

// Example of using prepared statements with PDO to prevent SQL injection
$pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase", "username", "password");

// Prepare a SQL statement
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");

// Bind parameters and execute the statement
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();

// Fetch the results
$results = $stmt->fetchAll();