code challenge: format currency

[Anon]

ok, i have a mysql database with an account summary table with a decimal(12,2) column.

an example cell contents could be 123456789012.34 or 1234.5 or 123456

hopefully you get the idea.

now i want to turn those into
$123,456,789,012.34 $1,234.50 $123,456.00
respectively.

this is very simple using regular expressions and string manipulation, but i was wondering if there was a built in function in mysql when selecting, or a built in function in php to do such number manipulation extremely fast. once again, i could easily do this, but i want the best possible solution.

[Anon]

Use the number_format(); function. This function takes four arguments:

number_format($number_formated, $decimal_places, $decimal_identifier, $thousands_separator);

so if you wanted to convert 1234.567 into 1,234.56 the function would look like this:
$number = "1234.567";
number_format($number, 2, ., ,);

if you want a dollar sign in from of is just use a print statement:

$formatted = number_format('1234.567', '2', '.', ',');

Print ("\$ $formatted");

I hope this helps. I got this information for this book called "PHP developers cookbook" I use it everyday, and it's a great reference.

[Anon]

$formatted = "\$".number_format('1234.567', '2', '.', ',');

well, it looks like that is my answer. thanks. hopefully they implemented the function well because i'll be using it 1000s of times a minute probably.