So what that means is that if you use a numeric value as a hash key, Perl will convert it to a string. There will not be any leading zeroes in that string!

The poster looks like he wants a table to translate a number into text months. I suspect that putting '08' in quotes is unlikely to be the best thing here and that the first reply "get rid of the leading zero" is probably better because I suspect this "8" will come from a numeric routine (like a time function) and if it doesn't (like from a webpage, etc) there is any easy way to "get rid of leading zeroes".

In Perl everything is a string until used in a numeric context. The below shows one trick that I sometimes use to "delete leading zeroes" without regex...See example 1, this just adds "0" to the string! Example 2 shows some pitfalls of comparing numeric values as strings! Example 3 show's Grandfather's 8 vs 7 keys with another example. The hash lookup needs a string and makes a string if it needs to for use in calculating the actual binary hash key.

#EXAMPLE 1
my $a = "0001";
print "a 1 as string is:$a\n";
$a+=0;                 # A trick!  forces numeric context!!!
print "a 1 as number is:$a\n";

#EXAMPLE 2
my $b="01";
if ($a eq $b)
{
   print "$a is eq $b\n";
}
else
{
   print "$a is NOT eq $b\n";
}

if ($a == $b)
{
   print "$a is == $b\n";
}
else
{
   print "$a is NOT == $b\n";
}

#EAMPLE 3
my $string_eight="8";
my $numeric_eight = 8;
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if ($string_eight eq $b)
{
   print "string $string_eight is eq number $numeric_eight\n";
}
else
{
   print "string $string_eight is NOT eq number $numeric_eight\n";
}
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my %hash = ('8'=>"string eight", 8 =>'number 8');
print "hash key uses the stringified version of 8: $hash{'8'} or $hash
+{$numeric_eight}\n";

__END__
a 1 as string is:0001
a 1 as number is:1
1 is NOT eq 01
1 is == 01
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#string 8 is NOT eq number 8</strike>
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hash key uses the stringified version of 8: number 8 or number 8
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