How about a two-stage approach? First, peel off your units: 
   s/(\D+)$//;
   my $units = $1;

[download]

Then proceed with the more standard problem of recognizing a number. See:

Normalizing your input in this way can be a powerful trick that allows you to more clearly identify and deal with your edge cases. Unless performance is absolutely stupendously crucial there is no reason to implement a monolithic regexp that handles every possibility.

Matt

In reply to Re: Identifying and parsing numbers by mojotoad
in thread Identifying and parsing numbers by dragonchild

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