What potential pitfalls should be considered when using PHP to manipulate text in a news script?

One potential pitfall when using PHP to manipulate text in a news script is the risk of introducing security vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks if user input is not properly sanitized. To mitigate this risk, always use functions like htmlspecialchars() to escape user input before displaying it on the page.

// Sanitize user input using htmlspecialchars() before displaying it on the page
$user_input = "<script>alert('XSS attack!');</script>";
$sanitized_input = htmlspecialchars($user_input);
echo $sanitized_input;