What are some best practices for efficiently searching and utilizing PHP functions for specific tasks like number formatting?

When formatting numbers in PHP, it is important to efficiently search for and utilize built-in functions to avoid reinventing the wheel. One common task is formatting numbers with specific decimal places or thousands separators. The number_format() function in PHP is a handy tool for achieving this task.

// Format a number with 2 decimal places and thousands separator
$number = 1234567.89;
$formatted_number = number_format($number, 2);
echo $formatted_number; // Output: 1,234,567.89