What are the potential pitfalls of validating a specific string format in PHP?

One potential pitfall of validating a specific string format in PHP is that it can be time-consuming and error-prone to manually check each character or pattern in the string. To solve this issue, you can use regular expressions to define the specific format you want to validate, making the process more efficient and accurate.

// Validate a specific string format using regular expressions
$string = "example123";

if (preg_match('/^[a-zA-Z0-9]+$/', $string)) {
    echo "String format is valid.";
} else {
    echo "String format is invalid.";
}