How to replace * with ✪ ("&\#x272A;") in `money_format`?

Question

setlocale(LC_MONETARY, 'en_US');
$str = money_format('%=*#4.4n',163.17852837291);

returns $**163.1785 for $str.

I'd like to print $✪✪163.1785, instead.

How do I solve the problem?

Answer 1

money_format can only accept a single byte fill character, so you cannot directly achieve what you want. However you can use str_replace after money_format to change the * into ✪:

setlocale(LC_MONETARY, 'en_US');
$str = money_format('%=*#4.4n',163.17852837291);
$str = str_replace('*', '✪', $str);
echo $str;

Output:

✪163.1785

Note there's only one ✪ as you have specified a width of 4 and you have 3 digits in the number.

Demo on 3v4l.org