a question about FLOAT

[phppup]

Can someone clear up my confusion about FLOAT.

 

I have data in a TINYINT field that displays whole numbers WITHOUT any decimal places.  This does not format very nicely when there are ALSO decimalled values to be echoed:

  1

1.5

  2

2.5, etc.    It can be a little confusing.

 

The only way I've thought of to resolve the issue (if you know another, please share) is to add a decimal place to get:  1.0

                                            1.5

                                            2.0

                                            2.5 etc.

 

But I am unclear on WHERE to put the commands to get this result.

 

Does it go into the actual DB?  Or into my PHP script?

 

Please help with a detailed example.  Thanks

[phppup]

And given my example of a ONE (or possibly two) place decimal, is there a benefit to using FLOAT versus DECIMAL?

[kicken]

You would format the numbers when you print them out so that they all have the same amount of digits after the decimal point.  You can use number_format to do this.

[guinbRo]

You would format the numbers when you print them out so that they all have the same amount of digits after the decimal point.  You can use number_format to do this.

 

I'm curious, could you also type cast the numbers? 

[kicken]

I'm curious, could you also type cast the numbers? 

 

If you want to display leading or tailing zeros (eg, 2.50 vs 2.5) then you have to cast the number to a string, apply the extra zeros, then output it.

 

For displaying a number to a certain decimal point value, number_format will handle this easily.  If you want leading zero's you'd use str_pad or sprintf.