Converting a number with comma as decimal point to

Question

I have a list of prices with a comma for a decimal point and a dot as the thousand separator.

Some examples:

12,30
116,10
1.563,14

These come in this format from a third party. I want to convert them to floats and add them together.

What is the best way to do this? number_format doesn't seem to work with this format, and str_replace seems like overkill, as I have to do it more that once on each number.

Is there are better way? Thanks.

Answer 1

from PHP manual:

str_replace — Replace all occurrences of the search string with the replacement string

I would go down that route, and then convert from string to float - floatval

Answer 2

Using str_replace() to remove the dots is not overkill.

$string_number = '1.512.523,55';
// NOTE: You don't really have to use floatval() here, it's just to prove that it's a legitimate float value.
$number = floatval(str_replace(',', '.', str_replace('.', '', $string_number)));

// At this point, $number is a "natural" float.
print $number;

This is almost certainly the least CPU-intensive way you can do this, and odds are that even if you use some fancy function to do it, that this is what it does under the hood.

Answer 3

Assuming they are in a file or array just do the replace as a batch (i.e. on all at once):

$input = str_replace(array('.', ','), array('', '.'), $input); 

and then process the numbers from there taking full advantage of PHP's loosely typed nature.

Answer 4

This function is compatible for numbers with dots or commas as decimals

function floatvalue($val){
            $val = str_replace(",",".",$val);
            $val = preg_replace('/\.(?=.*\.)/', '', $val);
            return floatval($val);
}
$number = "1.325.125,54";
echo floatvalue($number); // The output is 1325125.54
$number = "1,325,125.54"; 
echo floatvalue($number); // The output is 1325125.54

Answer 5

You could use the NumberFormatter class with its parse method.

Answer 6

If you're using PHP5.3 or above, you can use numfmt_parse to do "a reversed number_format". If you're not, you stuck with replacing the occurrances with preg_replace/str_replace.