With capture() you can more easily return the [1] group of a regular expression, or [0] if no parenthesis are set. The function sets up delimeters automatically.

$text = 'This costs $200,00 including shipping.';

$exp = '\$(200),00'; // instead of /\$(200),00/i

echo capture($exp, $text);  // returns 200

It's also possible to use capture_list(). In this case the first match in the list of expressions will be returned.

$text = 'This costs 200 EUR including shipping.';
$exps = [
  '(\d+) USD',
  '(\d+) GBP',
  '\$(\d+)',
  '(\d+)',
];
echo capture_list($exps, $text); // => 200

Number range

number_range creates a numeric range on the fly. Example:

echo number_range(10.5, 13.9, 2, '%');
// 10,50 – 13,90 %