in reply to rounding to nearest integer

perldoc -q round gives us this out of perlfaq4 =). It shows you were on one of the right tracks with printf().

Does Perl have a round() function? What about ceil() and floor()? Trig functions?

Remember that int() merely truncates toward 0. For rounding to a certain number of digits, sprintf() or printf() is usually the easiest route. 
   printf("%.3f", 3.1415926535);       # prints 3.142

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The POSIX module (part of the standard Perl distribution) implements ceil(), floor(), and a number of other mathematical and trigonometric functions. 
   use POSIX;
   $ceil   = ceil(3.5);                # 4
   $floor  = floor(3.5);               # 3

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Allolex

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom