round in PHP shows scientific notation instead of full number

Question

I'm trying to do an echo of a variable containing 1400000. so there is written: echo round(1400000); this gives 1,4E+6 instead of the full number. Anybody an idea on how to display it fully?

Answer 1

It seems that round was the problem. I changed it with number_format() and this does the job just fine. Thanks Aron and Paul for the answers.

Answer 2

Related to your question, I also came across this comment on the PHP website.

PHP switches from the standard decimal notation to exponential notation for certain "special" floats. You can see a partial list of such "special" values with this:

for( $tmp = 0, $i = 0; $i < 100; $i++ ) 
{
    $tmp += 100000;
    echo round($tmp),"\n"; 
} 

So, if you add two floats, end up with a "special" value, e.g. 1.2E+6, then put that value unmodified into an update query to store the value in a decimal column, say, you will likely get a failed transaction, since the database will see "1.2E+6" as varchar data, not decimal. Likewise, you will likely get an XSD validation error if you put the value into xml.

I have to be honest: this is one of the strangest things I have seen in any language in over 20 years of coding, and it is a colossal pain to work around.

It seems there has not been a "real" fix yet, but judging from the comments in the bug report Paul Dixon referered to earlier, his solution seems to work.