problem with string & floats in PHP

Hello, Im designing a website in which I have to read some data (numbers) from a txt file and then send this data to a function which prints a graphic with them. When I read the data I save it in an array and the numbers are in this format: 5.812E-08. I have read the php documentation about it, and I have use the example given there to check which type is the data saved in the array. The response I got is $vectorIc[1]== 5.812E-08 type is string I dont understand why. In the documentation it is clear that this kind of data should be considerer float, or thats what I understood. I cant continue with my web designing if I dont get to turn the vector elements into float numbers, because the function that prints the graphic gives errors when recieving strings. I would be very thankful if you could help me trying to solve this. In using PHP 4.4.7 and Apache 2.0.59. Thank you very much! _________________________________________________________________ Descubre la descarga digital con MSN Music. Más de un millón de canciones. http://music.msn.es/