How to tell apart numeric scalars and string scalars in Perl?

Question

Perl usually converts numeric to string values and vice versa transparently. Yet there must be something which allows e.g. Data::Dumper to discriminate between

Answer 1

Based on your comment that this is to determine whether quoting is needed for an SQL statement, I would say that the correct solution is to use placeholders, which are described in the DBI documentation.

As a rule, you should not interpolate variables directly in your query string.

Answer 2

The autobox::universal module, which comes with autobox, provides a type function which can be used for this purpose:

use autobox::universal qw(type);

say type("42");  # STRING
say type(42);    # INTEGER
say type(42.0);  # FLOAT 
say type(undef); # UNDEF 

Answer 3

I don't think there is perl function to find type of value. One can find type of DS(scalar,array,hash). Can use regex to find type of value.

Answer 4

A scalar has a number of different fields. When using Perl 5.8 or higher, Data::Dumper inspects if there's anything in the IV (integer value) field. Specifically, it uses something similar to the following:

use B qw( svref_2object SVf_IOK );

sub create_data_dumper_literal {
    my ($x) = @_;  # This copying is important as it "resolves" magic.
    return "undef" if !defined($x);

    my $sv = svref_2object(\$x);
    my $iok = $sv->FLAGS & SVf_IOK;
    return "$x" if $iok;

    $x =~ s/(['\\])/\\$1/g;
    return "'$x'";
}

You could use similar tricks. But keep in mind,

• It'll be very hard to stringify floating point numbers without loss. (Floating pointer numbers are identified using $sv->FLAGS & SVf_NOK.)

• You need to properly escape certain bytes (e.g. NUL) in string literals.

• A scalar can have more than one value stored in it. For example, !!0 contains a string (the empty string), a floating point number (0) and a signed integer (0). As you can see, the different values aren't even always equivalent. For a more dramatic example, check out the following:

  $ perl -E'open($fh, "non-existent"); say 0+$!; say "".$!;'
  2
  No such file or directory
  

Answer 5

It is more complicated. Perl changes the internal representation of a variable depending on the context the variable is used in:

perl -MDevel::Peek -e '
    $x = 1;    print Dump $x;
    $x eq "a"; print Dump $x;
    $x .= q(); print Dump $x;
'
SV = IV(0x794c68) at 0x794c78
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (IOK,pIOK)
  IV = 1
SV = PVIV(0x7800b8) at 0x794c78
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (IOK,POK,pIOK,pPOK)
  IV = 1
  PV = 0x785320 "1"\0
  CUR = 1
  LEN = 16
SV = PVIV(0x7800b8) at 0x794c78
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (POK,pPOK)
  IV = 1
  PV = 0x785320 "1"\0
  CUR = 1
  LEN = 16

Answer 6

There's no way to find this out using pure perl. Data::Dumper uses a C library to achieve it. If forced to use Perl it doesn't discriminate strings from numbers if they look like decimal numbers.

use Data::Dumper;
$Data::Dumper::Useperl = 1;
print Dumper(['1',1])."\n";

#output
$VAR1 = [
          1,
          1
        ];