historical use of microtime() as a string

[winterheat]

I wonder what's the historical use of microtime() returning a string?

is the string actually useful at some point?

i see code every where just get back the value and constructing it as a float. why not returning it as a float when microtime() was first written?

[nico_swd]

microtime() has always returned the same. Only the "get as float" option was added later, but it's optional if you set the first argument to "true".

www.php.net/microtime