More elegant function with selection of decimal point (deafault ,):
<?php
function floatvaldec($v, $dec=',') { return floatval(ereg_replace("," , "." , ereg_replace("[^-0-9$dec]","",$v))); }
// examples:
echo '<br>'.floatvaldec('somthing123.456.789,12Euro') ;
echo '<br>'.floatvaldec('x123,456 789.12 Euro', '.') ;
echo '<br>'.floatvaldec('123.456 789,12$') ;
?>