What is the purpose of replacing special characters in PHP form input, and what potential issues can arise if this is not done correctly?

Special characters in form input can potentially be used for malicious purposes, such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To prevent these vulnerabilities, it is important to sanitize and replace special characters in PHP form input before processing or storing it. Failure to do so can result in security breaches and compromised data integrity. 

// Sanitize and replace special characters in PHP form input
$input = $_POST['input_field']; // Assuming the form input is stored in a variable called 'input_field'
$sanitized_input = htmlspecialchars($input, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');

Keywords

PHP special characters form input security vulnerability data validation

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