How do I tell if a variable has a numeric value in Perl?

Question

Is there a simple way in Perl that will allow me to determine if a given variable is numeric? Something along the lines of:

if (is_number($x))
{ ... }
         


        

Answer 1

A simple (and maybe simplistic) answer to the question is the content of $x numeric is the following:

if ($x  eq  $x+0) { .... }

It does a textual comparison of the original $x with the $x converted to a numeric value.