Question

Something like this:

echo somefn(2800000000); // outputs '2,8B' for 2,8 billion
echo somefn(2000000); // outputs '2M' for 2 million
echo somefn(5400); // outputs '5,4K' for 5,400
echo somefn('blabla') // outputs 'blabla' as it is because it isn't a number
echo somefn(5) // outputs 5, nothing to simplify

I know it must be really easy code but I wonder if anyone else has something that accounts for maybe other cases that don’t pop in my head right now.

/Edit I’m looking for something more in the lines of a generalized, built-in PHP function (or something close to that). Pretty much the same way strtotime() can handle things like “weeks” or “months”.

Answer 1

I don’t know of any off the shelf function you can call. Here’s one possible solution:

function number_abbr($number) {
  if (!is_numeric($number) || $number < 1000)
    return $number;

  $postfix = array("K", "M", "B", "T");
  while ($number >= 1000 && count($postfix) > 0) {
    $number /= 1000;
    $append = array_shift($postfix);
  }

  // if the number is still greater than 1000...
  if ($number > 1000)
    return "a lot";

  // return the output
  return sprintf("%1.1f" . $append, $number);
}