PHP - Serialize floating points

Question

I am generating 10 random floats between 6 and 8 (all for good reason), and writing them to a mysql database in a serialized form. But one quirk seems to emerge at the stora

Answer 1

Casting also works, and it is faster, Example:

$a = 0.631;
$b = serialize($a);
$c = serialize((string)$a);
var_dump($b);

string(57) "d:0.6310000000000000053290705182007513940334320068359375;"

var_dump($c);

string(12) "s:5:"0.631";"

var_dump(unserialize($b));

float(0.631)

var_dump(unserialize($c));

string(5) "0.631"

The important thing is to cast it back on unserialize:

var_dump((float)unserialize($c));

float(0.631)