Hi, From http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.types.float.php (second comment in that page, from "kjohnson at zootweb dot com"): "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:" Then he goes on about it and finishes with: " 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." I have the same problem. I have a big number I have to represent, it's usually "1" followed by 10 "zeros", the biggest value I'll have for it is 19999999999, never more than this. I only make one operation with it, (+), most of the time I need that number as a string, and never need it's float representation, only the absolute value (in fact, it's never going to have a fractional part). I cannot use integers because it's bigger than the integer range. If it goes to it's exponential representation, breaks my code. Users are identified by that number. I wrote a small function, but cannot be sure if it's going to work (report error when the exponential notation is used by php), mostly because on my tests, I can't precise when and to which of these numbers php chooses to use the exponential notation: --- code function checkFloat($float_var) { $ar_empty = ""; $string_var = (string)$float_var; $pattern = '/[0-9]|\./'; // From zero to nine and "dots" $match_found = preg_match_all($pattern, $string_var, $ar_empty); unset($ar_empty); if ($match_found != strlen($string_var)) { return false; } else { return true; } } --- code So, any suggestions/thoughts? Is there a way to prevent php from using the exponential notation for a float? thanks = -- Powered by Outblaze -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php