in reply to changing a string to a numeric variable

You might want to delete commas only on numbers. If there's a possibility of other nun-numeric characters in numbers, you might delete those, as well.

@numbers = map { /\d/ && s/\D//g } split $wholeLine; # # Or insist on leading digit? # @numbers = map { /^\d/ && s/\D//g } split $wholeLine;

--
TTTATCGGTCGTTATATAGATGTTTGCA