Well, I solution that I'm using now is similar to Dragonchild's suggestion, using simple arithmetic and several assignments to achieve the same effect. The problem with using the
methods is that I'm storing the formatted value into a variable for use later, and not immediately printing it to standard output. O_o
That's why I was hoping for a magical regex to come whisk the kludge from my code. I know it's possible, and it's driving me nuts!