What PHP functions can be used to compare dates and determine when content should be hidden?

To compare dates and determine when content should be hidden in PHP, you can use the `strtotime()` function to convert dates to Unix timestamps for easy comparison. You can then use conditional statements with functions like `time()` to get the current timestamp and compare it with the timestamps of the start and end dates for hiding content.

$start_date = strtotime('2022-01-01');
$end_date = strtotime('2022-12-31');
$current_date = time();

if ($current_date >= $start_date && $current_date <= $end_date) {
    // Display content
} else {
    // Hide content
}