What potential pitfalls should be avoided when using includes in PHP to prevent errors or security vulnerabilities?

One potential pitfall to avoid when using includes in PHP is including files based on user input without proper validation. This can lead to security vulnerabilities such as remote code execution. To prevent this, always sanitize and validate user input before using it in an include statement. 

// Example of including a file based on user input with proper validation
$allowed_files = ['file1.php', 'file2.php', 'file3.php'];

$user_input = $_GET['file'];

if (in_array($user_input, $allowed_files)) {
    include($user_input);
} else {
    echo "Invalid file specified";
}

Keywords

include require security vulnerabilities file path injection attacks

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