I'm trying to multiply some small numbers in PHP, but bcmul is returning zero because the float value is being turned into scientific notation.
I tried using sprintf('%.32f',$value)
on the small float values, but since the number of decimal places is unknown, it gets the wrong rounding, and then it'll cause rounding errors when multiplying.
Also, I can't use strpos('e',$value)
to find out if it's scientific notation number, because it doesn't finds it even if I cast it as a string with (string)$value
Here's some example code:
$value = (float)'7.4e-5'; // This number comes from an API like this
$value2 = (float)3.65; // Another number from API
echo bcmul($value,$value2); // 0
Okay, I found a way to solve it, so, here's how to multiply very small floating point numbers without needing to set an explicit scale for the numbers:
function getDecimalPlaces($value) {
// first we get how many decimal places the small number has
// this code was gotten on another StackOverflow answer
$current = $value - floor($value);
for ($decimals = 0; ceil($current); $decimals++) {
$current = ($value * pow(10, $decimals + 1)) - floor($value * pow(10, $decimals + 1));
}
return $decimals;
}
function multiplySmallNumbers($value, $smallvalue) {
$decimals = getDecimalPlaces($smallvalue); // Then we get number of decimals on it
$smallvalue = sprintf('%.'.$decimals.'f',$smallvalue ); // Since bcmul uses the float values as strings, we get the number as a string with the correct number of zeroes
return (bcmul($value,$smallvalue));
}