Set precision for a float number in PHP

Question

I get a number from database and this number might be either float or int.

I need to set the decimal precision of the number to 3

Answer 1

You can use number_format() to achieve this:

echo number_format((float) $number, $precision, '.', ''); 

This would convert 1518845.756789 to 1518845.757.

But if you just want to cut off the number of decimal places short to 3, and not round, then you can do the following:

$number = intval($number * ($p = pow(10, $precision))) / $p;

It may look intimidating at first, but the concept is really simple. You have a number, you multiply it by 10³ (it becomes 1518845756.789), cast it to an integer so everything after the 3 decimal places is removed (becomes 1518845756), and then divide the result by 10³ (becomes 1518845.756).

Demo