in reply to Idiomatic Perl

Anonymous Monk,
This can be trickier than it first appears due to the fact that $increment may exist but not be numeric - pesky warnings and strictures. You also run into a problem if the $increment is not defined since looks_like_number says that an undefined value looks numeric. 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Scalar::Util 1.10 'looks_like_number';

my $total = 4;
my $increment = 'blah';

$total += $increment || 0 if looks_like_number( $increment );

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Cheers - L~R

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Re: Re: Idiomatic Perl
by flyingmoose (Priest) on Mar 02, 2004 at 20:12 UTC
    In the spirit of TIMTOWTDI and my well-beloved ternary abuse (which I like since many other languages have it): 

    $total += looks_like_number($increment) ? $increment : 0

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[reply]
[d/l]
      flyingmoose,
      This won't work for the reason I described above. If $increment is undefined looks_like_number will still return true. 
      #!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Scalar::Util 1.10 'looks_like_number';

my $total = 4;
my $increment;

$total += looks_like_number($increment) ? $increment : 0
__END__
Use of uninitialized value in addition (+) at blah.pl line 9.

      [download]
      Cheers - L~R
[reply]
[d/l]
        Fair enough. That was typed in the middle of a boring telecom (as are most of my posts), so that explains my inability to read.
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