Search code examples
phpdecimalfixed-point

Doing exact real number arithmetic with PHP

What is fastest and most easy way of making basic arithmetic operations on strings representing real numbers in PHP? I have a string representing MySQL's DECIMAL value on which I want to operate and return the result to a database after that. I would like to avoid errors introduced by floating-point real number representation.

Is there some standard library like Python's decimal? Are there any FOSS libraries you can recommend?

Regards

Solution

  • You could use the BC math functions:

    http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.bc.php

    Or the GMP functions, although they seem to be integer only.

    http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.gmp.php