Question

What is the PHP command that does something similar to intval(), but for decimals?

Eg. I have string "33.66" and I want to convert it to decimal value before sending it to MSSQL.

Answer 1

How about floatval()?

$f = floatval("33.66");

You can shave a few nanoseconds off of type conversions by using casting instead of a function call. But this is in the realm of micro-optimization, so don’t worry about it unless you do millions of these operations per second.

$f = (float) "33.66";

I also recommend learning how to use sscanf() because sometimes it’s the most convenient solution.

list($f) = sscanf("33.66", "%f");