[SOLVED] variables for money

[M.O.S. Studios]

hey guys a quick question

 

i want a variable to have 2 decimal places even if the value is zero. so 18 = 18.00

is their an easy command for that or do I have to program code to check and add them?

 

also if the value = 18.001 i want it to come out as 18.00

 

any tips help thanks in advance

[ignace]

number_format() you can find the correct syntax in the manual

[M.O.S. Studios]

Awesome worked like a charm

 

 

its now offical

 

phpfreaks is the best website on the web.

 

almost make me want to give up on mine seening as it could never be as awesome as this

[cooldude832]

number_format() you can find the correct syntax in the manual

 

For simple actions this is fine the better way is to actually use the money_format function( http://us.php.net/money_format)

and to treat the values as floats not integers.  which means to use them as floats in your database with precision of 2

[Mchl]

For simple actions this is fine the better way is to actually use the money_format function( http://us.php.net/money_format)

and to treat the values as floats not integers.  which means to use them as floats in your database with precision of 2

 

There isn't such a thing as a 'float with a precision of 2'. What you mean is probably a numeric/decimal type.

See SQL antipatterns presentation available in mysql forums here on phpfreaks to see the difference between the two.

[cooldude832]

This seems to say that you can specify the precision of a float

 

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/numeric-types.html

[Mchl]

Then it's not a float anymore, because float, as its name implies has floating point (and variable precision).

 

But this is technical discussion about how types are implemented.

 

Let's have an example, that shows how float and decimal types differ in practice.

 

First a table

CREATE TABLE  `floatvsdecimal` (
  `ID` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `fl` float NOT NULL default '0',
  `decm` decimal(5,2) NOT NULL default '0.00',
  PRIMARY KEY  (`ID`)
);

 

Then data:

insert 1000 rows like this one.

INSERT INTO `floatsvsdecimal` VALUES
(null,0.33,0.33);

 

And now select:

 

SELECT sum(`fl`), sum(`decm`) FROM floatvsdecimal;

 

Results:

+-----------------+-----------+
| sum(fl)         | sum(decm) |
+-----------------+-----------+
| 330.00001311302 |    330.00 | 
+-----------------+-----------+

 

1000 rows, and there's a discrepancy on fifth decimal place. You need 1'000'000 rows for it to show up in second decimal place. If the values inserted into a table were more varied as in real life, it's possible that the discrepancy was even larger (or smaller). What's more, it can vary between hardware platforms and operating systems.