There is nothing wrong with your approach at all - Another method might be to employ the sprintf operator for which there is an excellent tutorial on this site. eg.

sub roundThatBadDog {
    my $seconds = shift;
    return sprintf("%d", $seconds);
}

[download]

Or alternatively, if you are wanting precision, replace the %d with %.xf where x is a integer value representing the order of decimal precision desired.

 

Update

 

In response to japhy's comments, I checked out the FAQ and ran a few timing tests to compare.

From my reading, the comments in the FAQ hardly suggest the avoidance of sprintf function for rounding purposes but rather the use of a more intrinsic, known method of rounding (such as those submitted by japhy here) for sensitive or high-value operations. The example given is a financial environment where the FAQ rightly suggests that a programmer should implement their own rounding code rather than relying on system functions.

With regard to a timing comparison, the following is the output - Make of it what you will :-)

Benchmark: timing 100000 iterations of japhy, rob_au...
     japhy:  3 wallclock secs ( 4.13 usr +  0.00 sys =  4.13 CPU) @ 24
+213.08/s (n=100000)
    rob_au:  4 wallclock secs ( 4.23 usr +  0.00 sys =  4.23 CPU) @ 23
+640.66/s (n=100000)

[download]

 

Update

 

These results may not be truly indicative of function performance, and may I add, not intendedly so. japhy discusses performance differences in his more comprehensive comparison here. ++japhy!

 

And the (now superceded) code used for the benchmark timings ...

#!/usr/bin/perl

use Benchmark;
use strict;

timethese(100000, {
    'rob_au'    =>  q!
        my @values = ( 1.24, 5.43, -98.54, -73.667, 0.67, 2.34, 76.89,
+ -999.99, 34.52, 67.89 );

        foreach my $value (@values) {
            my $result = sprintf("%d", $value);
        }
    !,
    'japhy'     =>  q!
        my @values = ( 1.24, 5.43, -98.54, -73.667, 0.67, 2.34, 76.89,
+ -999.99, 34.52, 67.89 );

        foreach my $value (@values) {
            my $result = int($value * 10**0 + .5 * ($value < 0 ? -1 : 
+1)) / 10**0;
        }
    !
});

[download]
perl -e 's&&rob@cowsnet.com.au&&&split/[@.]/&&s&.com.&_&&&print'

In reply to Re: Preferred Methods by rob_au
in thread Preferred Methods by vek

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