Convert a price attribute to float

Question

I have made a new attribute called RRP. It has exactly the same settings as the Price attribute. But when I var_dump the value inside the attribute it is displaying as a string when I need it to be a float so I can calculate a percentage.

This is what I currently have:

$RRP = Mage::helper('core')->formatPrice($product->getrrp_price());

Which formats the price.

Then I use

$rrp_String =  $value = preg_replace('/^\D+/u', '', $RRP);

To make it into a string without the £ so I can have an if-statement to check if it is over 0. How could I change this line to convert $RRP into a float instead of a string?

So I want to replace the $rrp_String line with something that will convert $RRP into a float as then I can use it in the same if-statement as well as when I'm trying to calculate percentages using the RRP

Edit

I ended up using:

<?php
$RRP = $product->getrrp_price();
$rrp_float = floatval($RRP);
?>

Without $rrp_String = $value = preg_replace('/^\D+/u', '', $RRP);

This seemed to have solved the problem

Answer 1

Not quite sure if i'm just misunderstanding your question (sorry if I have) but there is no need to format the price if you're just checking the value.

Just use:

$price = $product->getrrp_price();
if ($price > 0) {
    $rrp = Mage::helper('core')->formatPrice($price);
}

Think you're over-complicating what you're trying to do :-)

You can cast an integer (or resulting string provided it is just numbers) as a float with:

(float)$rrp;