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

Not perfect, but you can use a regex:

sub isnumber 
{
    shift =~ /^-?\d+\.?\d*$/;
}