What are the potential pitfalls of comparing dates in PHP using manual formatting like Ymd?

When comparing dates in PHP using manual formatting like Ymd, potential pitfalls include not accounting for time zones, daylight saving time changes, and leap years. To avoid these issues, it's recommended to use PHP's built-in DateTime class, which handles date comparisons accurately and takes care of these complexities. 

$date1 = DateTime::createFromFormat('Ymd', $dateString1);
$date2 = DateTime::createFromFormat('Ymd', $dateString2);

if ($date1 < $date2) {
    echo "$dateString1 is before $dateString2";
} elseif ($date1 > $date2) {
    echo "$dateString1 is after $dateString2";
} else {
    echo "Dates are equal";
}

Keywords

date comparison PHP Ymd format strtotime date functions

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