What are the best practices for converting formatted number strings to integer values for comparison in PHP?

When comparing formatted number strings in PHP, it is important to convert them to integer values for accurate comparisons. To do this, you can use the `intval()` function to convert the number strings to integers. This function will strip any non-numeric characters from the string and return the integer value.

$numberString1 = "1,234";
$numberString2 = "1,235";

$intValue1 = intval(str_replace(',', '', $numberString1));
$intValue2 = intval(str_replace(',', '', $numberString2));

if ($intValue1 < $intValue2) {
    echo "Number 1 is less than Number 2";
} elseif ($intValue1 > $intValue2) {
    echo "Number 1 is greater than Number 2";
} else {
    echo "Number 1 is equal to Number 2";
}