Using float columns in Laravel 11 migrations

Question

The upgrade notes for Laravel 11 say:

The float column type now creates a FLOAT equivalent column without total digits and places (digits after decimal point), but with an optional $precision specification to determine storage size as a 4-byte single-precision column or an 8-byte double-precision column. Therefore, you may remove the arguments for $total and $places and specify the optional $precision to your desired value and according to your database's documentation:

$table->float('amount', precision: 53);

However, the database documentation doesn't provide any explanation for what the precision argument might represent or why it defaults to 53. What effect will changing the value have on the resulting column?

Answer 1

Wasn't planning on a self-answer, but I thought to check MySQL's documentation and got an answer:

For FLOAT, the SQL standard permits an optional specification of the precision (but not the range of the exponent) in bits following the keyword FLOAT in parentheses, that is, FLOAT(p). MySQL also supports this optional precision specification, but the precision value in FLOAT(p) is used only to determine storage size. A precision from 0 to 23 results in a 4-byte single-precision FLOAT column. A precision from 24 to 53 results in an 8-byte double-precision DOUBLE column.

So I think this means my old migrations with $table->float('price', 6) should continue to work as expected.