Question

I have a database with a column containing a variety of numbers written in “shorthand”, for example:

5k for 5,000
86.6k for 86,600
4.1m for 4,100,000
1.2b for 1,200,000,000

I’d like to do some calculations with these numbers for a PHP frontend, but I need to convert them into valid integers in order to do so. How could I do this with PHP?

Answer 1

Something like:

switch (strtolower(substr($input, -1))) {
        case 'k':
                $input*=1000;
                break;
        // similarly for m, M, b, B.
}

Assuming your data is well-formatted. If not more check would be needed like:

if (!preg_match('/^\d+(?:\.\d+)?[mbk]$/i',$input)) {
   // $input is not a valid format.
}