Number as string

[manoj_speed]

Hi friend

I declared a variable in my program. I assigned a numeric value(Ex.10) to that variable. How can I make my perl program to treat that numeric value as a string?. ( It should not add the values when I use the plus(+) operator )

[bellaire]

It's not possible. In Perl, unlike most languages, the operators force their context on their operands. If you use + on any values, they will be converted into numerics. What exactly are you trying to accomplish?

[Marshall]

This is right. Everything is a string until you do something that puts it into a numeric context. Here's a little trick that "deletes" leading zeroes.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my $num="000123";
print "$num\n";
$num += 0;
print "$num\n";
_END_
prints:
000123
123

If you are say comparing things that are supposed to be numbers, then use the numeric compare rather than a string compare! Perl doesn't know "000123" is a number until you say it is. A <,>, etc. will trigger this numeric conversion. Just something to watch out for when you are doing sorts, etc. The ascii sort order is different than the numeric sort order, see this...

my $a="99";
my $b="111";
if ($a gt $b)
{print "$a is greater than $b";}
#prints 99 is greater than 111

[lostjimmy]

If you want to concatenate two variables together, either use the concatenation operator, or just interpolate them.

my ($var1, $var2) = ("variable = ", 10);

# concatenate
print $var1 . $var2;

# interpolate
print "$var1$var2";

[misterwhipple]

The + operator is always about addition of numbers. If you want to concatenate a string value, use ".".

From Programming Perl:

$a = 123;
$b = 456;
print $a + $b;     # prints 579
print $a . $b;     # prints 123456

[JavaFan]

Except in a few isolated cases, Perl doesn't dispatch operators on their argument types. In general, it's the operator that determines what happens, and the operands adjust themselves. Other languages have operators adjust themselves to their operands, but not Perl. (There will be type based dispatch in Perl6. But that an "other language"). In Perl, if you want to concatenate values, you have to use the concatenation operator: ..