php - convert large number to spoken english

Question

Converting 'small' numbers to English is not to troublesome. But if you handle BCMath Arbitrary Precision numbers then it can be.

Using code from:

http://marc.info/?l=php-general&m=99928281523866&w=2

The maximum number seems to be:

two billion one hundred forty seven million four hundred eighty three thousand six hundred forty seven

Anyone know a function to convert numbers bigger than that?

Answer 1

You have to write your own function, I suggest to use numbers as a string, let a substract like this:

    $string =  "12356";
    $text="";
    // level means 0-ones, 1- thousand , 2 million, 3 billion etc...
    $level=0;
    //until string has no character left
    while ($len=getval($string)){
      // get partial number from 0 to 999
      $string_partial = substr($string, (strlen($string)-$len)) ;
      // get hundreds
      $hund = ($string_partial - ($string_partial % 100))/100;
      // get tens
      $tens = $string_partial - ($hund *100);
      $tens = ($tens - ($tens %10))/10;
      // get ones
      $ones = $string_partial - ($tens*10) - ($hund*100);
      // remove partial_string form original string             
      $string = substr($string, 0, (strlen($string)-$len));
      // edbug echoing
      echo $level . " - " . $hund. " - " . $tens .  " - " . $ones . "<br>";
      // you need to create a function that convert number to text only from 0 to 999 to set correct million/thousand etc, use $level.
      //$text = getTextvalue($hund,$tens,$ones,$level).$text;
      //increment $level
      $level++;
    }
    function getval($n){
      switch (strlen($n)){
       case 0: return false;
       case 1: return 1;
       case 2: return 2;
       default: return 3;
       }
    }

example:

$string =  "123456789";

will output

 $level - $hund - $tens - $ones
 0 - 7 - 8 - 9  
 1 - 4 - 5 - 6  //thousand
 2 - 1 - 2 - 3  //million