I have a problem when I read csv files that contain values like 886468000000, it gets parsed as 8,86468E+11, which is a huge problem for my app, because I need to parse and retain the number in original form.
I google around the documentation and found nothing, I also tried retypging the exponential string representation as float during parsing , but that does not work either, it returns 8, which is obviously incorrect.
After testing with PHP 7.2.8 x86 and x64 below are my observations.
The reason that 8,86468E+11 is being converted to 8 is because of PHP's type-casting behavior when a comma is used instead of a period as the decimal separator. See below:
echo (float) '8,86468E+11'; // 8 wrong
echo (float) 8,86468E+11; // 88646800000000000 still wrong but getting close
echo (float) '8.86468E+11'; // 886468000000 success!
echo (float) 8.86468E+11; // 886468000000 success!
The primary issue for you is that your decimal separator is a comma instead of a period so to remedy this you will need to make use of str_replace():
$my_num_from_csv = '8,86468E+11';
$my_num_from_csv = (float) str_replace( ',', '.', $my_num_from_csv );
echo $my_num_from_csv; //886468000000