Actually, your problem doesn't have a simple solution. Two equal strings surely have the same numerical values, but what about two different strings? According to perlnumber these different strings all have the same numerical value: 1, 0x1, 01, 0b00000001

So, when $a eq $b says they are different, what would you do? I'll compare with == then! It's a simple or!. Gotcha! I am sorry, it's wrong: try to see what happens with ($a,$b) = qw(x y)...

What then? Well, when they are stringwise different, you have to choose again if you want to make a numerical comparison or not. You could check (by means of a regexp, for example) if $a and $b look like a number. If they don't, they are different and that's the end of the game; if they both are numbers you can (finally) proceed with ==

I had liked to find a better solution, but I think there isn't any.

Ciao!
--bronto

The very nature of Perl to be like natural language--inconsistant and full of dwim and special cases--makes it impossible to know it all without simply memorizing the documentation (which is not complete or totally correct anyway).
--John M. Dlugosz

In reply to Same number, different string [Re: my least favorite perl feature] by bronto
in thread my least favorite perl feature by waxmop

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.