What are the potential pitfalls of not properly escaping characters like backslashes in PHP code?

Not properly escaping characters like backslashes in PHP code can lead to syntax errors, unexpected behavior, and security vulnerabilities. To avoid these pitfalls, it is important to properly escape characters using functions like addslashes() or mysqli_real_escape_string() when dealing with user input or data that may contain special characters. 

// Example of properly escaping characters using mysqli_real_escape_string()
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "username", "password", "database");

// Assuming $input contains user input
$input = $mysqli->real_escape_string($input);

// Use $input in your SQL query
$query = "SELECT * FROM table WHERE column = '$input'";
$result = $mysqli->query($query);

Keywords

SQL injection security vulnerability addslashes htmlspecialchars escaping characters

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