How to add many values in a good way with bcmath?

Question

If I want to add several values together with BCMath I could do like this:

$total_cost1 = bcadd($value1, $value2);
$total_cost2 = bcadd($value3, $value4);
$total_cost3 = bcadd($value5, $value6);
$total_cost4 = bcadd($value7, $value8);

$total_cost = 
    bcadd(bcadd($total1_cost, $total2_cost), 
    bcadd($total3_cost, $total4_cost));

but it makes it so unreadable and it would be easy to make mistakes. Please tell me there is a another way of solving this...!?

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered May 19 '14 at 10:40

5

There's nothing wrong with that approach, just hide it.

You can write a generic function which takes an array of numbers and adds them in a loop.

Then you can simply: bcsum(array($value1, $value2, ....))

answered May 19 '14 at 10:40

Karoly Horvath

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encapsulate the functionality. you want to write that boiler-plate summation code only once. – Karoly Horvath May 19 '14 at 10:43
Does `bcsum()` exist? I can't find documentation for it anywhere. – tptcat Oct 29 '18 at 13:22
@tptcat `bcsum()` is the "generic function" you would have to write yourself. – Jonas Staudenmeir Dec 18 '18 at 15:04

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 15 '20 at 13:47

Following up on Karoly's answer, you might implement it something like this:

function bcsum(array $numbers) : string {
    $total = "0";
    foreach ($numbers as $number) {
        $total = bcadd($total, $number, 2);
    }
    return $total;
}

bcsum(["1", "0.3", "0.33333", "0.033333"]);

How to add many values in a good way with bcmath?

2 Answers2