What potential pitfalls should be considered when using cURL in PHP, especially when encountering error messages or issues with initialization?

When using cURL in PHP, potential pitfalls to consider include handling error messages and issues with initialization. To address these, it's important to check for errors returned by cURL functions and handle them appropriately. Additionally, ensuring proper initialization of cURL options and resources can prevent unexpected behavior.

// Initialize cURL session
$ch = curl_init();

// Set cURL options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://example.com');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

// Execute cURL request
$response = curl_exec($ch);

// Check for errors
if(curl_errno($ch)){
    echo 'cURL error: ' . curl_error($ch);
}

// Close cURL session
curl_close($ch);