Need cart total value only. No currency sign.

I need to assign the value of the cart total to a variable, but when i pass the data using
$num_in_cart = $currencies->format($_SESSION['cart']->show_total());

$num_in_cart shows up as £52.99 for example.
I need to have the figure as 52.99 only.
How do i call the required data without the currency sign?

Thanks

Steve

You could just trim off the first character..

$num_in_cart = substr($num_in_cart, 1);

That's what i thought, but if i try that i get a result such as pound;132.00
I'm now thinking that maybe i'm going to have to extract the prices from the array passed to the cart and add them together to get the figure as a pure integer.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks
Steve

I found the solution to my problem. Just dropped the $currencies->format off and used $_SESSION['cart']->show_total();

Should have known it would be simple!

a simpler solution would have been to go into ZC ADMIN
go to localization -> curencies
highlihgt the default and set the descriptor to {blank}

no code mods needed

That would affect the front-end