flounder99,
While this increases the possibilities there are still some missing. If I were tackling this problem, I would do one of the following:
  • Correct whatever mechanism was causing/allowing the leading spaces "Malformed UTF-8 character"
  • Write a util for stripping the leading spaces "Malformed UTF-8 characters" and saving changes before running the secondary script
  • Delegate the number determination to a modified form of the looks_like_a_number from Scalar::Util. See copy/pasted excerpt below: 
    sub looks_like_number {
  local $_ = shift;

  # checks from perlfaq4
  return 1 unless defined;
  return 1 if (/^[+-]?\d+$/); # is a +/- integer
  return 1 if (/^([+-]?)(?=\d|\.\d)\d*(\.\d*)?([Ee]([+-]?\d+))?$/); # 
+a C float
  return 1 if ($] >= 5.008 and /^(Inf(inity)?|NaN)$/i) or ($] >= 5.006
+001 and /^Inf$/i);

  0;
}

    [download]
    In all honesty, I would do steps 1 and 2 once and incorporate 3 as part of my regular script to ensure my data didn't get polluted with erroneous entries.

    Cheers - L~R

    In reply to Re: Re: Re: Numerical value of strings by Limbic~Region
    in thread Numerical value of strings by mgdude

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