Why is it important to perform input sanitation?

Performing input sanitation is crucial primarily to prevent unwanted characters from causing issues within a program. When user input is accepted without proper validation or cleaning, it can lead to various problems, such as security vulnerabilities, data corruption, and unexpected behavior of the application. By sanitizing inputs, developers can ensure that the data adheres to the expected format and does not contain malicious content, such as SQL injection attacks or script injections. This protective measure helps maintain the integrity and security of systems, making it an essential practice in software development.

While the other options touch on relevant concepts, they do not capture the primary concern of input sanitation. Formatting data correctly is part of data handling but does not directly address security and integrity issues. Enhancing programming skills is a benefit of learning to sanitize inputs but is not the main reason to implement it. Making code run faster is related to performance optimization and does not pertain to the necessity of handling user input securely.