in reply to Re: Challenge - Creative Way To Detect Alpha Characters
in thread Challenge - Creative Way To Detect Alpha Characters

Sorry, this is my first time posting here... let me try that again: 

#!/usr/bin/perl

$string = $ARGV[0];

for(split(//,$string)) {

   if(($_ * $_ == 0) && $_ ne '0') {

      print "alpha: $string\n";
      exit(0);

   }

}

print "numeric: $string\n";

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jkauffman

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Re^3: Challenge - Creative Way To Detect Alpha Characters
by doowah2004 (Monk) on Sep 14, 2004 at 12:29 UTC
    jkauffman,

    Unfortunately this code fails for special chars (@,#,$,%...), if you $_++, the the special chars=>1, but alphas increment. If you look at my code above you will see that our attempts are similar, $_**2 is the same as $_ * $_, and does remove the the numbers (except 0) again this is why you would use $_++, adding that first takes care of the zero. I am just not sure if my code above filters all special chars.

    Good attempt, we were thinking similar ;)

    Cameron
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