Re: Re: Re: Numerical value of strings

flounder99,
While this increases the possibilities there are still some missing. If I were tackling this problem, I would do one of the following:

Correct whatever mechanism was causing/allowing the ~~leading spaces~~ "Malformed UTF-8 character"

Write a util for stripping the ~~leading spaces~~ "Malformed UTF-8 characters" and saving changes before running the secondary script

Delegate the number determination to a modified form of the looks_like_a_number from Scalar::Util. See copy/pasted excerpt below:

sub looks_like_number {
  local $_ = shift;

  # checks from perlfaq4
  return 1 unless defined;
  return 1 if (/^[+-]?\d+$/); # is a +/- integer
  return 1 if (/^([+-]?)(?=\d|\.\d)\d*(\.\d*)?([Ee]([+-]?\d+))?$/); # 
+a C float
  return 1 if ($] >= 5.008 and /^(Inf(inity)?|NaN)$/i) or ($] >= 5.006
+001 and /^Inf$/i);

  0;
}
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In all honesty, I would do steps 1 and 2 once and incorporate 3 as part of my regular script to ensure my data didn't get polluted with erroneous entries.

Cheers - L~R

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