I'd like to be able to put a "numeric" or "string" in front a var to let it know what I want

You can. They are spelled "0+" and "''." respectively. 

my $x = '8';
my $y = '16';
print((0+$x) | (0+$y), "\n");    # 24
print((''.$x) | (''.$y), "\n");  # 96

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Update: Oops, that doesn't quite answer your question. If the variable wasn't read-only, you could do the following: 

$x .= '';  # Stringify
$x += 0;   # Numerify

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In reply to Re^3: runtime problem; elusive error by ikegami
in thread runtime problem; elusive error by perl-diddler

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