floatval($moneyString) returning 0

Question

Code:

var_dump($prodCost);  
$prodCost = (float)$prodCost;  
var_dump($prodCost);

result:

string(5) "$4.57"
float(0)

What am I doing wrong here? I am looking for the result to be float(4.57).

Answer 1

The $-sign is not valid for numbers, PHP will break off after the first non-numeric char. Try this:

php > echo floatval(ltrim('$4.57', '$'));
4.57