bug 43053 - scientific notation

Hello, I just wanted to find out the status of bug 43053 (http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=43053) which is regarding inconsistent handling of floating point numbers which seems to have changed in PHP 5.2.2 and later, but I don't see it documented nor see it listed on any changelog or announcement. The problem is that certain floating point numbers are being printed in scientific notation while others aren't - for example, 1200000.00 prints as 1.2E+6 while 1300000.00 prints as 1300000. In PHP 5.2.1 and earlier, 1200000.00 printed as 1200000. This then causes output and validation issues since if the 1.2E+6 number is being passed somewhere else, sprintf must be wrapped around it (e.g. echo'ed in the script, put in a xml document validated against a schema, etc). While I understand that the way floating point numbers are stored can vary and shouldn't be relied upon, I'm more curious why a change was made in PHP 5.2.2 to print certain numbers in scientific notation, as it makes working with floating point numbers much more difficult in PHP - in all previous versions of PHP, these numbers were printed out in full form, not in scientific notation. Appreciate any help or feedback you could provide- Thanks, Ryan