small math lesson for AM: just incase you didn't realize, taking the nth root of anything is the same as raising that expression/number/etc..etc..etc... to the 1/n power where n is the root you are trying to find.

to find the 5th root of x, you simply do x**(1/5), 218th root x**(1/218), you get the picture. FYI: very much respect for the question, but just not a perl way of doing it.. just a math way. You can write your own sub to do it if you really wanna make it readable for newbies or non-coders.

#!/perl

use strict;

#Take the 3rd root of 8;
my $root = nthRoot(8,3);

print $root;

#Just pull the parameters off the 
#@_ array as they are needed
#in the return statement
sub nthRoot
{return (shift)**(1/shift);}
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