Re: Best guess for data type

[LanX]

> For example, given 100 numbers would guess that its a numerical array while mixed strings and numbers would return that the best data type is string.

depends on your definition of number, but I think this helps:

  DB<160> @a=("1",0)
 => (1, 0)

  DB<161> if (grep { $_+0 ne $_ } @a)  { "string" } else { "num" } 
 => "num"

  DB<162> @a=("1 ",0,"")
 => ("1 ", 0, "")

  DB<163> if (grep { $_+0 ne $_ } @a)  { "string" } else { "num" } 
 => "string"

> I am thinking along the lines of what most statistical applications do when you load a CSV file and they try to guesstimate what data type each column is.

scalar grep returns a number, your free to check for thresholds.

  DB<166> @a=("1 ",0,"")
 => ("1 ", 0, "")

  DB<167> scalar grep { $_+0 ne $_ } @a
 => 2

  DB<168> (grep { $_+0 ne $_ } @a) > @a/2
 => 1

update

you could also use Scalar::Util which is core

  DB<186> use Scalar::Util qw/looks_like_number/
 => 0

  DB<187> grep { ! looks_like_number($_) } 0,"1","2 ", 3.14, " 4 ", 5e
+55, "six"
 => "six"

please not that now strings like " 4 " are considered numbers!

As I said depends a lot on your definition... =)