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Floats

2:30 with Alena Holligan

Not all numbers are as simple as integers. We often need to keep track of fractional values, like product that costs $1.99 or a distance like 2.5 miles. Those values are called floats, floating point values, real numbers or doubles: all names for the same thing. For decimal numbers we use the PHP variable type of Float.

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floats also known as " Floating point numbers", "doubles", or "real numbers", can be specified using any of the following syntaxes:

$a = 1.234; 
$b = 1.2e3; 
$c = 7E-10;

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Not all numbers are as simple as integers. 0:00

We often need to keep track of fractional values like products that cost $1.99, 0:02

or distance like 2.5 miles. 0:07

Those values are called floats. 0:10

Floating point integers, real numbers or doubles, all names for the same thing. 0:12

For decimal numbers we use the PHP variable type float. 0:18

Let's start by commenting out these var dumps. 0:23

Now let's say we want to find the distance of a trip. 0:28

So we'll create two variables here, distance home and distance to work. 0:32

Distance_home, we'll set this equal to a floating point and number. 0:36

We simply set this variable equal to 1.2. 0:43

Enclose the statement with a semi colon. 0:46

Then we'll add our second floating point variable distance to work. 0:50

And will set this equal to 2.5. 0:54

Again ending with a semi-colon. 0:58

Now we can use the same type of operations we've done before. 1:01

Let's do a var dump, and we'll dump 1:06

the distance home plus the distance to work. 1:10

All right, now let's save and 1:18

run our script AS you can see we can take floating point numbers and 1:21

add them together and get returned a floating point value. 1:25

Now what if I were to add a non floating point number to this equation. 1:31

So let's say we'll and the variable num 3. 1:35

Number three is a whole number. 1:42

So let's save this script and run it again. 1:44

Now we see 6.7. 1:49

So if we take whole numbers and we sum them to floating point numbers 1:50

we're still going to get a floating point in return. 1:55

Let's add one more floating point number to make our results a whole number. 1:59

Let's add 0.3. 2:02

Again, run the script and 2:08

we see the results of seven, but the type is still a float. 2:10

Any time we're using a floating point value the result will be a float as well. 2:16

Most of the time, 2:21

you won't need to worry about defining a variable as an integer or a float. 2:22

PHP automatically handles the differences, so you don't have to. 2:26

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