What best practices should be followed when handling financial calculations in PHP to prevent discrepancies like the one mentioned in the forum thread?

When handling financial calculations in PHP, it is important to use the appropriate data types and precision to prevent discrepancies. One common issue is floating-point precision errors, which can lead to incorrect results in financial calculations. To avoid this, it is recommended to use the `bcmath` extension in PHP for precise decimal arithmetic. 

// Using the bcmath extension for precise decimal arithmetic
$amount1 = '10.55';
$amount2 = '20.30';

$result = bcadd($amount1, $amount2, 2); // Adding two amounts with 2 decimal precision

echo $result; // Output: 30.85

Keywords

floating point precision rounding errors number_format BCMath financial calculations

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