Question

I have script that identifies with preg_match_all some numbers from a given file and in a given format '#(\d\,\d\d\d\d)#' (decimal, with 4 decimals). With them, later, I need to do some math operations to find out the sum, average etc.

With print_r I can see all matches from the array and it is ok (4,3456, 4,9098, etc.). I verify the type of variables and gettype() returned string

Unfortunately I cannot do math operations with them because when I use the variables in a math expression the result is always rounded regardless of what came afer the comma.

For example:

4,3456 + 4,9098 + 4,3456 = 12, or 12,0000 — if I use number_format.

I used . instead of , in the numbers, I formatted the results with number_format, but have had no success. It seems I am missing something.

Thanks for help!

Answer 1

The error happens even before the number_format call — PHP considers . as the decimal separator, not ,. you need to str_replace all your array elements:

$values_array = str_replace(",", ".", $values_array)