Why Does PHP Display Small Numbers in Scientific Notation, and How Can I Format Them as Decimals?

Why PHP Prints Numbers in Scientific Notation Despite Specifying Decimal Format

In PHP, you have encountered an issue where a numeric value assigned as .000021 is printing as 2.1E-5 in scientific notation. To understand this behavior and find a solution, let's delve into the issue.

The issue arises because PHP interprets the number .000021 as a floating-point number. Floating-point numbers in PHP have a limited precision, and when they are too small or too large, they are often displayed in scientific notation. This is done to maintain the accuracy of the value.

To resolve this issue and ensure that your number prints in the desired decimal format, you can use the number_format() function. The number_format() function allows you to specify the number of decimal places to display.

Here's an example using number_format():

$var = .000021;
echo number_format($var, 5); // Output: 0.00002

In this example, we use number_format() to specify that we want the number to be formatted with 5 decimal places. As a result, the output will be 0.00002, which meets your requirement.

Alternatively, you can also use the sprintf() function to achieve the same result:

$var = .000021;
echo sprintf("%.5f", $var); // Output: 0.00002

By using sprintf(), we specify that we want a floating-point number with 5 decimal places. Both number_format() and sprintf() provide you with control over the output format of numeric values, allowing you to achieve your desired result.

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