how to evaluate exponential notations and floating points

BhariD has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I have the following code:

while($evalue = <DATA>){
chomp;
   if($evalue < 0.001){
      print OUTPUT $evalue, "\n";
    }
}
close DATA;
[download]

DATA
-----------
1e-005
2e-090
0.00
0.67
1.0
4e-065
[download]

For some reason the above code does not seem to do what I want. It prints out the input in the DATA as it is without evaluating the if statement above.

OUTPUT (wrong)
-----------
1e-005
2e-090
0.00
0.67
1.0
4e-065
[download]

The output should look like this: (the evalue of 0.00 means 1e-180, so should be counted).

OUTPUT (correct)
-----------
1e-005
2e-090
0.00
4e-065
[download]

Anyone knows what I am doing wrong here?

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