A scalar is not an object, in particular it does not belong to any string or number class. In Perl, unless special measures are taken (see e.g. Simon Cozens' book "Advanced Perl programming"), not everything is an object, in contrast to e.g. Ruby.

I rather feel this is an advantage: how a scalar behaves is determined by the context in which it is used. Usually, Perl makes just the right choice and you are spared of having to enforce a special interpretation. Do you have an example of a case where a scalar was not interpreted as you expected?

In reply to Re: When does '123' become the number 123.0? by jds17
in thread When does '123' become the number 123.0? by wa1ter

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