The system uses Oracle for persistence, where the decimal separator is a comma, as is a custom in that country. So numbers came in from Oracle, and then PHP was unable to process them correctly. For example, if a client had a debt of 25,12€, and the client paid 5€, then the comparison ($paid_amount > $debt) said incorrectly that the paid amount was more than the debt. Result: hundreds of wasted man-hours. In the end we recompiled PHP without that "fix".

Oui, chez Zend aussi on aime faire de la grosse daube.