PHP number: decimal point visible only if needed

Question

I\'d like to know if exists some function to automatically format a number by it\'s decimal, so if I have:

Answer 1

Warren.S answer helped me out. I didn't need the number_format function, so I just did this

$value=$value-0;

But in the OP's case, he needs number_format to remove the commas. So this would work for him

$value=number_format ($sql_result["col_number"], 2, ".", "")-0;