Two ways come to mind:

$item= 5540986;
$item= 0 + '05540986';
[download]

The second works because, although 010 is octal when found in Perl source code, when Perl converts a string like '010' to a number, only base 10 is used (otherwise there would be no need for the oct and hex functions).

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")