title: PHP - Convert string to integer with thousand-seperator support
body: <p>Either I googled wrong or I'm the first asking for this actually really simple functionality.</p>
  
  <p>I have strings like "18.439", "500", "20.000" that need to be converted into integers: 18439, 500, 20000 (where I live, we use points as thousand seperators).</p>
  
  <p>I was hoping for <a href="http://php.net/manual/de/function.intval.php" rel="nofollow noreferrer">intval()</a> to handle this, as in C# you can add a second parameter <a href="https://msdn.microsoft.com/de-de/library/c09yxbyt(v=vs.110).aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">NumberStyles.AllowThousands</a> which perfectly works.</p>