Describe how you manage state file(s) when you have multiple environments (e.g. development, staging and production)

Probably no right or wrong answer here, but it seems, based on different source, that the overall preferred way is to have a dedicated state file per environment.

Common patterns:

• Separate backend configurations per environment (different S3 prefixes or even different buckets and DynamoDB tables).

• Distinct workspaces or directories when you need isolated state plus different credentials.

• Terraform Cloud organizations/workspaces mapped to environments with role-based access control.