"23 s stored as a single byte hence i cant split."

Byte?! You're thinking in C terms! Go wash your mouth out with soap right now! ;-)

In Perl, strings and integers are both represented by the same data type - scalars. (Internally Perl represents scalars as a C struct which has separate string and integer slots. But you don't normally need to worry about such concerns.) If you have a variable that contains an integer value, such as 23, and pass it to something that expects a string, like split, that integer will be silently converted to a string.

Here's exactly the same function I posted before, only now I'm using the integer 23 as the input...

use 5.010;
use strict;
use warnings;

# 23 is an integer.
#
say digit_sum(23);

# This expression is used to test that a string consists of a single
# digit. We use it a couple of different places, so we'll get define
# it once here.
#
use constant DIGIT => qr/^[0-9]$/;

# This is the function which adds digits
#
sub digit_sum {
    my $string = shift;
    
    # Otherwise, split into digits.
    my @digits =
        grep { $_ =~ DIGIT }  # keep only the numeric characters
        split '', $string;    # split into characters
    
    # Add the digits together.
    my $sum = 0;
    $sum += $_ for @digits;
    
    # Handle the trivial case.
    # If $sum is just a single digit, return it as-is.
    return $sum if $sum =~ DIGIT;
    
    # Otherwise, recurse.
    return digit_sum($sum);
}

[download]
perl -E'sub Monkey::do{say$_,for@_,do{($monkey=[caller(0)]->[3])=~s{::}{ }and$monkey}}"Monkey say"->Monkey::do'

In reply to Re^5: How to split an integer?? by tobyink
in thread How to split an integer?? by nithins

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.