So I got a really long string, made by a calculator.
$string='483451102828322427131269442894636268716773727170';
$result=(8902543901+$string)*($string/93.189)/($string)+55643907015.57895461;
echo $result;
This outputs 5.1878558931668E+45
So now my question is. How can I output the whole string, without that nasty E+45?
PHP on a 64 bit machine can only accurately calculate number up until 9223372036854775807. As soon as you calculate with numbers higher than that, php will switch to floats which may loose some of it's precision, especially when you use divisions.
There's an extension for php that will allow you to make calculations based on string, called BCMath.
Example:
$string = '483451102828322427131269442894636268716773727170';
$result = bcadd($string, 8902543901);
echo $result;
bcadd() is for additions, bcdiv() for divisions and bcmul() for multiplying.
You can't print exact value because you are using calculation, so this $string becomes a number (float in this case) and all numbers have limited precision.
If you want to do operations on big numbers you should use BCMath
However if you want to display it without scientific notation you can do it using:
echo sprintf("%f",$result);
or
echo sprintf("%.0f",$result);
if you want to omit decimal part
Related
I made this function. It seemed it's working but when it comes to 20 digits number, the return value was 19. I'm wondering why this problem happen..
My function
function sumDigits($n) {
return strlen($n);
}
echo sumDigits(100); //3
echo sumDigits(1000); //4
echo sumDigits(12345); //5
echo sumDigits(1000000000); //10
echo sumDigits(145874589632); //12
echo sumDigits(0); //1
echo sumDigits(12345698745254856320); //19 <-- Why not 20?
Can you please somebody explain for me?
Thank you so much.
First, I would point out that the name of your function is misleading, as you are not really summing the values of the digits, but are counting the digits. So I would call your function countDigits instead of sumDigits.
The reason why it doesn't work for large numbers, is that the string representation will switch to scientific notation, so you're actually getting the length of "1.2345698745255E+19" not of "12345698745254856320"
If you are only interested in integers, you will get better results with the logarithm:
function countDigits($n) {
return ceil(log10($n));
}
For numbers that have decimals, there is no good solution, since the precision of 64-bit floating pointing point numbers is limited to about 16 significant digits, so even if you provide more digits, the trailing decimals will be dropped -- this has nothing to do with your function, but with the precision of the number itself. For instance, you'll find that these two literals are equal:
if (1.123456789123456789123456789 == 1.12345678912345678) echo "equal";
Because you function parameter is an integer, exceeding the limit.
If you dump it, it actually shows the following:
1.2345698745255E+19 - which is 19 letters.
If you would do the following, it will return 20 - mind the quotes, which declares the input as string.
echo sumDigits("12345698745254856320"); //19 <-- Why not 20? -> now will be 20
As per documentation, strlen() expects a string so a cast happens. With default settings you get 1.2345698745255E+19:
var_dump((string)12345698745254856320);
string(19) "1.2345698745255E+19"
The root issue is that PHP converts your integer literal to float because it exceeds PHP_INT_MAX so it cannot be represented as integer:
var_dump(12345698745254856320, PHP_INT_MAX);
In 64-bit PHP:
float(1.2345698745254857E+19)
int(9223372036854775807)
You could change display settings to avoid E notation but you've already lost precision at this point.
Computer languages that store integers as a fixed amount of bytes do not allow arbitrary precision. Your best chance is to switch to strings:
var_dump('12345698745254856320', strlen('12345698745254856320'));
string(20) "12345698745254856320"
int(20)
... and optionally use an arbitrary precision library such as BCMath or GMP if you need actual maths.
It's also important to consider that this kind of issues is sometimes a symptom that your input data is not really meant to be an integer but just a very long digit-only string.
I have a float value that I need to store as a string in PHP and then compare later after casting back into a float.
Due to the conversion I know that relying on equality would be a mistake, as there's potential for a loss of precision, so I'm doing something like the following:
if (abs((float)$string_value - $float_value) < 0.001) { echo "Values are close enough\n"; }
Now, while a margin for error of 0.001 should be fine for my immediate purposes, it got me wondering; what is the smallest margin of error that I can reliably/safely use?
I realise that the safe margin of error will change with the size of the float (i.e- larger values have less or even no fractional precision), so an answer should probably account for this.
So to put it another way; given a float value that I want to store in base 10 and read back, how can I reliably decide what my margin of error should be such that I can reasonably confirm that the two values are the same?
Unfortunately the values I'm handling must be stored in plain decimal form, so my usual go-to of packing them as a network order 64-bit integer is not an option here ☹️
EDIT: To clarify; please assume that my question is about handling arbitrarily sized floats; the example code I've given is for a recent case where I'm handling floats within a limited range, so setting the margin of error manually is fine, but I'd like to be able to handle floats of any magnitude in future.
As mentioned in Mark Dickinson's comment, it is possible to convert a floating-point number to a string and back without losing precision. This only works if
you use enough significant decimal digits (17 for IEEE doubles)
the conversions are accurate (i.e. they're guaranteed to convert to the nearest number)
From a quick look, it seems that casting a double $f to a string in PHP, either implicitly or with (string) $f, only uses 14 significant digits, so this method isn't accurate enough. But you can use sprintf with a %.16e conversion specifier to get 17 significant digits. So after the following roundtrip
$s = sprintf("%.16e", $f);
$f2 = (double) $s;
$f2 should equal $f exactly unless PHP uses suboptimal algorithms internally.
Note that the %e conversion specifier uses scientific (exponential) notation. If you need plain decimal strings, you can use the %f specifier and calculate the required number of digits after the decimal point using log10:
if ($f != 0) {
$prec = 16 - floor(log10(abs($f)));
if ($prec < 0) $prec = 0;
}
else {
$prec = 0;
}
$s = sprintf("%.${prec}f", $f);
This can produce extremely long strings for very small or large numbers, though.
It would probably require a huge amount of research to tell the whether these methods are completely reliable, and if not what the maximum error is. It all depends on several implementation details like PHP version, underlying C library, etc.
Another idea is to compare the string representations instead of floating-point values:
# Assuming $string_value was also converted with float_to_string
if ($string_value == float_to_string($float_value)) {
echo "Values are close enough\n";
}
This should be reliable as long as you stick to the same PHP version.
If you must compare floating-point numbers, it often makes more sense to compare the relative error. See Bruce Dawson's excellent blog for more details.
In PHP I have the following code:
<?PHP
$var = .000021;
echo $var;
?>
the output is 2.1E-5 !
Why? it should print .000021
Use number_format() to get what you're after:
print number_format($var, 5);
Also check sprintf()
2.1E-5 is the same number as 0.000021. That's how it prints numbers below 0.001. Use printf() if you want it in a particular format.
Edit If you're not familiar with the 2.1E-5 syntax, you should know it is shorthand for 2.1×10-5. It is how most programming languages represent numbers in scientific notation.
Use number_format or sprintf if you want to see the number as you expect.
echo sprintf('%f', $var);
echo number_format($var, 6);
To show a number up to 8 decimal spaces, without extra zeroes to the right (as number_format does, which can be annoying), use this:
echo rtrim(rtrim(sprintf('%.8F', $var), '0'), ".");
In general, a number is a number, not a string, and this means that any programming language treats a number as a number. Thus, the number by itself doesn't imply any specific format (like using .000021 instead of 2.1e-5). This is nothing different to displaying a number with leading zeros (like 0.000021) or aligning lists of numbers. This is a general issue you'll find in any programming language: if you want a specific format you need to specify it, using the format functions of your programming language.
Unless you specify the number as string and convert it to a real number when needed, of course. Some languages can do this implicitly.
The previous answers responded to OP question, but none offered the code to do it.
Use this function to format any number with E- format.
function format_amount_with_no_e($amount) {
$amount = (string)$amount; // cast the number in string
$pos = stripos($amount, 'E-'); // get the E- position
$there_is_e = $pos !== false; // E- is found
if ($there_is_e) {
$decimals = intval(substr($amount, $pos + 2, strlen($amount))); // extract the decimals
$amount = number_format($amount, $decimals, '.', ','); // format the number without E-
}
return $amount;
}
Please note the function will always return a string.
Programming languages have different methods for storing numbers in memory. This is determined by the type of number that is being used. In your case, you have a floating point number (a fraction) that is to large to be stored as a fixed point number ( fractions are stored in this manner depending on their size).
This is a very important feature especially when working with very large or very small numbers. For instance, NASA or spaceX uses special storage methods for its calculations to ensure that the rockets the re-enter earths orbit land where they should.
Also, different storage methods take up different amounts of memory. However, the solution provided above should work. Just remember round off errors might occur with very big or small numbers.
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.
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");
If you mean a float:
$var = floatval("33.66")
Or
$var = (float)"33.66";
If you need the exact precision of a decimal, there is no such type in PHP. There is the Arbitrary Precision Mathematics extension, but it will return strings, so it's only usefull for you when performing calculations.
You could try floatval, but floats are potentially lossy.
You could try running the number through sprintf to get it to a more correct format. The format string %.2f would produce a floating-point-formatted number with two decimal places. Excess places get rounded.
I'm not sure if sprintf will convert the value to a float internally for formatting, so the lossy problem might still exist. That being said, if you're only worrying about two decimal places, you shouldn't need to worry about precision loss.
php is a loosely typed language. It doesn't matter if you have
$x = 33.66;
or
$x = "33.66";
sending it to mssql will be the same regardless.
Are you just wanting to make sure it is formatted properly, or is an actual float?
In PHP I have the following code:
<?PHP
$var = .000021;
echo $var;
?>
the output is 2.1E-5 !
Why? it should print .000021
Use number_format() to get what you're after:
print number_format($var, 5);
Also check sprintf()
2.1E-5 is the same number as 0.000021. That's how it prints numbers below 0.001. Use printf() if you want it in a particular format.
Edit If you're not familiar with the 2.1E-5 syntax, you should know it is shorthand for 2.1×10-5. It is how most programming languages represent numbers in scientific notation.
Use number_format or sprintf if you want to see the number as you expect.
echo sprintf('%f', $var);
echo number_format($var, 6);
To show a number up to 8 decimal spaces, without extra zeroes to the right (as number_format does, which can be annoying), use this:
echo rtrim(rtrim(sprintf('%.8F', $var), '0'), ".");
In general, a number is a number, not a string, and this means that any programming language treats a number as a number. Thus, the number by itself doesn't imply any specific format (like using .000021 instead of 2.1e-5). This is nothing different to displaying a number with leading zeros (like 0.000021) or aligning lists of numbers. This is a general issue you'll find in any programming language: if you want a specific format you need to specify it, using the format functions of your programming language.
Unless you specify the number as string and convert it to a real number when needed, of course. Some languages can do this implicitly.
The previous answers responded to OP question, but none offered the code to do it.
Use this function to format any number with E- format.
function format_amount_with_no_e($amount) {
$amount = (string)$amount; // cast the number in string
$pos = stripos($amount, 'E-'); // get the E- position
$there_is_e = $pos !== false; // E- is found
if ($there_is_e) {
$decimals = intval(substr($amount, $pos + 2, strlen($amount))); // extract the decimals
$amount = number_format($amount, $decimals, '.', ','); // format the number without E-
}
return $amount;
}
Please note the function will always return a string.
Programming languages have different methods for storing numbers in memory. This is determined by the type of number that is being used. In your case, you have a floating point number (a fraction) that is to large to be stored as a fixed point number ( fractions are stored in this manner depending on their size).
This is a very important feature especially when working with very large or very small numbers. For instance, NASA or spaceX uses special storage methods for its calculations to ensure that the rockets the re-enter earths orbit land where they should.
Also, different storage methods take up different amounts of memory. However, the solution provided above should work. Just remember round off errors might occur with very big or small numbers.