What potential issues can arise when using the explode function in PHP to process user input containing special characters like "|"?

When using the explode function in PHP to process user input containing special characters like "|", the potential issue is that the special character itself may be interpreted as a delimiter, causing unexpected results. To solve this issue, you can use a different delimiter that is not present in the user input to explode the string.

$userInput = "John|Doe|Jane|Smith";
$delimiter = "#";
$explodedArray = explode($delimiter, str_replace("|", $delimiter, $userInput));

print_r($explodedArray);