What are the potential pitfalls of not using proper formatting for numbers in PHP?

Not using proper formatting for numbers in PHP can lead to readability issues, confusion, and potential errors in calculations. It is important to format numbers correctly to ensure that they are displayed in a clear and consistent manner. One way to solve this issue is by using PHP's number_format() function, which allows you to format numbers with specified decimal places, thousands separators, and decimal separators.

$number = 1234567.89;
$formatted_number = number_format($number, 2, '.', ',');
echo $formatted_number; // Output: 1,234,567.89