What potential pitfalls should be considered when linking PHP files?

When linking PHP files, it's important to be cautious of potential security vulnerabilities such as directory traversal attacks. To mitigate this risk, always sanitize user input and validate file paths before including or requiring them in your code. Additionally, avoid using absolute file paths and instead rely on relative paths to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive files on the server.

// Example of including a PHP file with sanitized input
$filename = 'includes/' . basename($_GET['file']);
if (file_exists($filename)) {
    include $filename;
} else {
    echo 'File not found.';
}