if i understand you correctly you will take $percentamount variable which have to contain 10 as its value and just put '.' in front of it to make string '0.1' out of it - is it right? If yes than you could take 10 as digit and place it within a string as follows:
sprintf('.%d', 10); // %d stands for digit and means digit should be your second parameter
if you want to have 10 as string input you could write it as follows:
sprintf('.%s', '10');
if it is not the solution you looking for please describe it better and i'll try to help