I can't think of a better way to explain it than perlfaq 4:
When a floating-point number gets printed, the binary floating-point representation is converted back to decimal. These decimal numbers are displayed in either the format you specify with printf(), or the current output format for numbers (see $# if you use print. $# has a different default value in Perl5 than it did in Perl4. Changing $# yourself is deprecated.

This affects all computer languages that represent decimal floating-point numbers in binary, not just Perl. Perl provides arbitrary-precision decimal numbers with the Math::BigFloat module (part of the standard Perl distribution), but mathematical operations are consequently slower.

To get rid of the superfluous digits, just use a format (eg, printf("%.2f", 19.95)) to get the required precision. See Floating-point Arithmetic.

stephen

In reply to (stephen) Re: Strange (rounding?) problem by stephen
in thread Strange (rounding?) problem by gildir

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