Simple Math

[Anon]

I have a rather simple problem that should be easy to solve by more experienced php'ers.

$saleprice = ($row[retailprice] * .15);
$asd = $row[retailprice] - $saleprice;
echo $asd;

$row[retailprice] is coming ot of my table with a dollar sign and decimal places ($3.25). This code on win2k with iis/php works fine, however with linux apache/php it does not. I tried $saleprice = ($row[retailprice] / .85); to simplify things but that resulted the same works on 2k but not linux.

Does linux need the dollar sign removed to do math ?

[[deleted]]

Why don't you store the price as a FLOAT instead of a string?

[Anon]

Vincent,
FLOAT as in a column type on the table? I searched the php manual for float with no returns.

Tnx.
Newbie - Eric

[[deleted]]

yes FLOAT is a columntype in the database, not in PHP.

Normally you'd store numeric data in a numeric column type.
If required, you could store the currency of that value in a seperate column.

Some databases have 'MONEY' types, but they are usually for one currency only.

[Anon]

Vincent,
Changing the column type did not seem to help. ?
Tnx.
Eric

[[deleted]]

What does the column contain now?

[Anon]

ZEROs...

Let me go search for my back up.

Eric

[[deleted]]

giggle

I was affraid of that.
You had strings in there before, then changed the column type to something that cannot contain that '$' sign. Consequently the database defaulted to the next best thing, a zero.

When you've restored the backup, run a query on that table to remove everything that's not a number or a decimal point.
Floats only look like this: 34576.6765

Then the column contains only things that could be floats, and it's safe to do the transition.
Ofcourse it may be a good idea to make a new table to test it with, that's easier to restore than the whole database :-)