What are the best practices for formatting numbers in PHP to achieve specific results?

When formatting numbers in PHP, it is important to consider factors such as decimal precision, thousand separators, and currency symbols. To achieve specific results, you can use built-in PHP functions like number_format() for adding thousand separators, round() for decimal precision, and setlocale() for currency formatting.

// Formatting a number with thousand separators
$number = 1234567.89;
$formatted_number = number_format($number);

echo $formatted_number; // Output: 1,234,567

// Formatting a number with decimal precision
$number = 1234.56789;
$rounded_number = round($number, 2);

echo $rounded_number; // Output: 1234.57

// Formatting a number as currency
setlocale(LC_MONETARY, 'en_US');
$amount = 1234.56;
$currency = money_format('%i', $amount);

echo $currency; // Output: $1,234.56