Clearly, Perl is trying to interpret as much of the string as a number as it can. For that reason, the following will also work:
my $field = 2; print "A number!", $field + 1 if ( $field > 1);
So despite the warning that $field is not numerical Perl does try to read the actual numerical value assigned.

Not sure if this is any help.

Pat

In reply to Re: Question re numbers and strings by pat_mc
in thread Question re numbers and strings by ultranerds

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