What are the potential pitfalls of using number_format and replace functions together in PHP for formatting numbers with specific separators?

When using the number_format function in PHP to format numbers with specific separators, it may add commas or periods as thousands separators. If you then use the replace function to remove these separators, you may inadvertently remove decimal points or commas used as decimal separators, leading to incorrect formatting. To solve this issue, it's better to use the number_format function with the 'decimal_point' and 'thousands_separator' parameters set to empty strings to avoid adding separators that need to be removed later.

$number = 12345.67;
$formatted_number = number_format($number, 2, '', '');
echo $formatted_number;