PHP does not support explicit type casting in variable declaration. To convert the int
to a float
in the way you want to simply divide by 10:
$number = rand(1, 9) / 10;
See this page on PHP Type Juggling for more info. If you mix floats
and ints
or other types they will be re-casted. Exmple:
echo 10 + 2.5; // gives you 12.5, a float because of the types used
Edit: PHP does have explicit type casting, just not in variable declaration. But even if you cast an integer as a float, it won't display with a decimal place. To do that use PHP's number_format
function instead:
echo number_format(10, 1); // gives you 10.0
Edit 2: If you simply want to make your number a decimal between 0 and 1 (such that 2 becomes 0.2, 25 becomes 0.25, etc.) you could use the following function:
function getNumAsDecimal($num) {
return ($num / pow(10, strlen((string)$num)));
}
So getNumAsDecimal(2)
would return 0.2
.