in reply to All Calculations Done with One Variable Give Integer Answers

What is $gap = "$gap.00"; supposed to do? What do you think it does? Are you using the dot to try to concat to establish a two digit decimal field (syntax is wrong) or what?

I ask because I don't see the results you seem to describe in either of these cases:

C:\>perl -E "my $gap = 1.23; $gap = $gap.00; print ($gap + 1.5);"
2.73                     # not an integer
C:\>perl -E "my $gap = 1; $gap = $gap.00; print ($gap + 1.5);"
11.5                 # not even close! And not just BTW, WTF happens h
+ere?

[download]

I think we need a very small version of your remaining code (say 20 lines or so starting with an assignment to $gap of a typical non-date, numeric value) to know what's going on.

If I've misconstrued your question or the logic needed to answer it, I offer my apologies to all those electrons which were inconvenienced by the creation of this post.

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Re^2: All Calculations Done with One Variable Give Integer Answers
by HalNineThousand (Beadle) on Sep 23, 2013 at 17:50 UTC
    If $gap was previously equal to, say, 55, and I use $gap = "$gap.00" and print the result, I get 55.00. I guess I could use $gap = $gap."00" or other versions, but I tried this version and once I did that, from then on, any math done with $gap was no longer yielding integer results.
[reply]
      That doesn't seem to be what happens here   (perl -v: 'This is perl 5, version 16, subversion 2 (v5.16.2) built for MSWin32-x86-multi-thread (with 1 registered patch....)'   whether the value of $gap is numeric or stringified: 
      C:\>perl -E "my $gap = 55; $gap = "$gap.00";  say $gap;"
550
C:\>perl -E "my $gap =\"55\"; $gap = "$gap.00";  say $gap;"
550

      [download]

      Strongly suggest you explain or correct your latest statement.

      In light of marinersk's thoughtful check, remove emphasis, modify language to say:
      Suggest you tell us your version of Perl (and show compact version of actual code, as suggested above).
[reply]
[d/l]
        Interesting, slightly older Perl here and it does exactly what the OP indicates. Whether or not it accomplishes what he wants to accomplish is a different subject.

        I am baffled that anything would autonomously constrain itself to integer arithmetic -- I think we need to see some code to really assess what is going on.

        Update: As a complete side note, the version of Perl doesn't appear to cause a difference in the handling of the string interpretation. I suspect the difference between ww's results and mine are how we chose to display the values (either say vs. print, or command line vs. script file {perhaps the way the quotation mark characters are interpreted from the command line?} ): 

        #!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

{
    my $originalValue = 5;
    my $modifiedValue = "$originalValue.00";
    my $escapedValue = "$originalValue\.00";

    print "\$originalvalue = '$originalValue'\n";
    print "\$modifiedvalue = '$modifiedValue'\n";
    print "\$escapedvalue = '$escapedValue'\n";
}

exit;

__END__

---------------[ Older Perl ]---------------
C:\Steve\Dev\PerlMonks\P-2013-09-23@1207-ForceFloat>perl -v

This is perl, v5.8.9 built for MSWin32-x64-multi-thread
(with 12 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)

C:\Steve\Dev\PerlMonks\P-2013-09-23@1207-ForceFloat>forcefloat.pl
$originalvalue = '5'
$modifiedvalue = '5.00'
$escapedvalue = '5.00'

---------------[ Newer Perl ]---------------
C:\Steve\Dev\PerlMonks\P-2013-09-23@1207-ForceFloat>perl -v

This is perl 5, version 16, subversion 3 (v5.16.3) built for MSWin32-x
+64-multi-thread
(with 1 registered patch, see perl -V for more detail)

C:\Steve\Dev\PerlMonks\P-2013-09-23@1207-ForceFloat>forcefloat.pl
$originalvalue = '5'
$modifiedvalue = '5.00'
$escapedvalue = '5.00'

        [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

        I noticed you backslashed some of your quotes but not others. Using qq() may help:

        C:\>perl -E "my $gap = 55; $gap = qq[$gap.00]; say $gap;"
55.00

        [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

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