in reply to Testing For Numberness Vs Stringness

Under which scenarios does the is_numeric subroutine above not work? I ran a little test and it seems to work fine: 
foreach (3,'3',3.0,'3.0',3.1,'3.1') {
    print "$_ is ", is_numeric($_) ? '':'not ', "numeric\n";
}

sub is_numeric {
    ($_[0] & ~ $_[0]) eq "0";
}


$ ./is_numeric.pl 
3 is numeric
3 is not numeric
3 is numeric
3.0 is not numeric
3.1 is numeric
3.1 is not numeric

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-b

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Re^2: Testing For Numberness Vs Stringness
by BrooklineTom (Novice) on Nov 27, 2004 at 17:41 UTC
    AHA! bgreenlee, you have helped me resolve my mystery. Here's what happened. I originally tested the results like this: 
    my $a = 3.0;
my $b = '3.0';

my $stringCompareResult = $a eq $b?'true':'false';
my $numberCompareResult = $a == $b?'true':'false';

sub is_numeric {
  ($_[0] & ~ $_[0]) eq "0";
}

print ("\$stringCompareResult: $stringCompareResult\n");
print ("\$numberCompareResult: $numberCompareResult\n");

my $isNumericResultA = is_numeric($a)?'true':'false';
my $isNumericResultB = is_numeric($b)?'true':'false';
print ("\$isNumericResultA: $isNumericResultA\n");
print ("\$isNumericResultB: $isNumericResultB\n");

    [download]
    When I ran this code, I got the following output: 
    $stringCompareResult: false
$numberCompareResult: true
$isNumericResultA: true
$isNumericResultB: true

    [download]
    I see, now, thanks to your reply, that when I used $a and $b in the earlier comparison, the interpreter CHANGED their "type". I had forgetting that Perl does this.

    When I comment out the comparisons, and run just is_numeric, I get the same results as you. Thanks, bgreenlee!

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