What are the potential pitfalls of not handling file existence checks properly in PHP?

Not handling file existence checks properly in PHP can lead to errors such as trying to access or manipulate non-existent files, which can cause the script to crash or behave unexpectedly. To avoid these pitfalls, always check if a file exists before attempting to perform any operations on it.

$file_path = 'path/to/file.txt';

if (file_exists($file_path)) {
    // File exists, perform operations here
} else {
    echo "File does not exist.";
}