What potential issues may arise when comparing date values stored in different formats in a PHP application?

When comparing date values stored in different formats in a PHP application, potential issues may arise due to inconsistencies in the formats. To solve this issue, you can standardize the date formats before comparison by using PHP's date functions to convert them to a common format such as YYYY-MM-DD.

$date1 = "2021-10-15";
$date2 = "15/10/2021";

$standard_date1 = date("Y-m-d", strtotime($date1));
$standard_date2 = date("Y-m-d", strtotime(str_replace('/', '-', $date2)));

if ($standard_date1 == $standard_date2) {
    echo "Dates are equal.";
} else {
    echo "Dates are not equal.";
}