Remove leading zeroes but not all zeroes

Question

How can I remove all the leading zeroes but leave a final zero if the value only contains zeroes?

for example:

my $number = \"0000\";

Answer 1

If your $number is an integer, another way is to use printf:

for my $number (qw(005 05 5 000 0 500)) {
    printf "%d\n", $number;
}

__END__

5
5
5
0
0
500

Edit: As ysth points out, it works for all integers, not just positive integers as I originally stated.