Topic awaiting preservation: php calculation & notation question

Dear fellow inmates

Please help me with a task that kept me from doing real productive work all afternoon:

I am converting from square metres (Switzerland) to square feet (UK) like so:

<?php $sqm = '230'; echo "$sqm m&sup2; / "; print round($sqm * 10.764); echo " sq ft";?>

Basically the code is working fine but once I use larger square metre figures, like so:

3000 m² / 32292 sq ft

...the notation is missing.

Now how do I get the square metres to be Swiss notation and the sq ft to be UK notation like so?

3'000 m² / 32,292 sq ft


Help will be much appreciated!

<?php echo "$sqm m&sup2; / " . round($sqm * 10.764) . " sq ft"; ?>

Note what I did there--instead of having 3 print statements, I concatenated with the dot (".") operator. That should clear it up.

As for how to format the numbers returned, check out the function number_format() function, handles what you need.

-S

Thank you twItch^!

I figured it out:

<?php $sqm = '6666'; echo number_format($sqm, 0, ',', '\'') . " m&sup2; / " . number_format(($sqm * 10.764), 0, ',', '\,') . " sq ft"; ?>

Output is:

6'666 m² / 71,753 sq ft

Perfect!

I do wonder however if there isn't a better way of doing it: I have to repeat the above code twice for every property (plot and living space).

This gives me about 10 instances of the same code on the same page.

There must be a better way...

of course there is,
you need a php->Function

Thanks Tyberius!

Now I do understand the basics of php functions like so:

<?php
function calcsqft($sqm){
$sqft=number_format(($sqm * 10.764), 0, ',', '\,');
return $sqft;
}
 ?>

<?php echo calcsqft(400) . " sq ft" ?>

That works just fine. Now I would like to cut the code down to this:

<?php echo calcsqft(400) ?>

How do I get the echo sq ft part into the function?

return $sqft;
return $sqft . " sq ft";

Thanks Tyberius! I didn't think it would be that simple.

I have optimized the script further:

<?php
function sqft($sqm){
$ft=number_format(($sqm * 10.764), 0, ',', '\,');
return number_format($sqm, 0, ',', '\'') . " m&sup2; / " . $ft . " sq ft";
}
 ?>

All that is required now is one instance of the square metre figure:

<?php echo sqft(2700);?>

Output:

2'700 m² / 29,063 sq ft