Question

Is there any benefit to include the length specifier in a format string for sprintf or printf even though it’s not mentioned in the PHP manual:

• h – The argument is interpreted as a short int or unsigned short int (only applies to integer specifiers: i, d, o, u, x and X).
• l – The argument is interpreted as a long int or unsigned long int for integer specifiers (i, d, o, u, x and X), and as a wide character or wide character string for specifiers c and s.
• L – The argument is interpreted as a long double (only applies to floating point specifiers: e, E, f, g and G).

Or is it better to leave it out? I guess what I’m trying to figure out is why php decided to leave it out.

Consider the following code, which comes from phpriot.com:

$a = 0.5;
$b = 0.1;
$c = 16;

echo sprintf('%01.2lf %.1lf 0x%x', $a, $b, $c); # 0.50 0.1 0x10






 

Answer 1

In PHP there are no differentiation between numbers except for Integers and Floats. Depending on system architecture, 32 or 64-bit, the Integer type is a int or int64. You can use strings and BCMath to imitate larger numbers, but they’ll always be stored in strings.

So in PHP there’s no purpose to have a length specifier to change the type of the number. Either it’s a float, or it’s not.