use strict; use warnings; use Math::Round qw/round/; use Data::Dumper; # function returns 1 if all arguments are integer # zero otherwise sub is_approximately_an_integer { my $eps = 0.0001; while( my $x = shift ) { # need to use "round", "int" does not work! return 0 if abs( $x-round($x) ) > $eps; } return 1 } # some test cases print "Testing...\n"; print is_approximately_an_integer( 1, 3.99999999, 5 ), "\n"; print is_approximately_an_integer( 1.2, 3.99999999, 5 ), "\n"; print is_approximately_an_integer( 1, 3.99999999, 5.0000001 ), "\n"; print is_approximately_an_integer( 1, 3.99999999, -5 ), "\n"; print is_approximately_an_integer( 1, 3.99999999, -5.1 ), "\n"; print is_approximately_an_integer( 1, 3.99999999, -5.000000001 ), "\n"; print is_approximately_an_integer( 1, -3.99999999, -5.000000001 ), "\n"; print is_approximately_an_integer( 1 ), "\n"; print is_approximately_an_integer( 1.5 ), "\n"; # what if we have hash of arrays ? my %hash = ( "1,2,3" => [ 1, 3.99999999, 5 ], "1,2,4" => [ 1.2, 3.99999999, 5 ], "1,2,5" => [ 1, 3.99999999, 5.0000001 ], # etc ); # this returns only the arrays but lose keys print "\nSelected arrays\n"; my @wants = grep { is_approximately_an_integer( @$_ ) } values %hash; print Dumper( @wants ); # this returns the keys print "\nSelected keys...\n"; my @wants = grep { is_approximately_an_integer( @{$hash{$_}} ) } keys %hash; print Dumper( @wants ); print "...and the associated array.\n"; # and you can get the arrays as well print Dumper( @hash{@wants} );