If you really need to differentiate between the two, you might need to store some metadata. A simplistic example:

sub are_equal {
   return unless ($_[0][0] eq $_[1][0]);

   return $_[0][1] eq $_[1][1] if ($_[0][0] eq 'STRING');
   return $_[0][1] == $_[1][1] if ($_[0][0] eq 'NUMBER');

   die("Bad data");
}

$a = [ NUMBER => 3     ];
$b = [ STRING => '3.0' ];

print(are_equal($a, $b)?'equal':'not equal', $/);
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A more comprehensive, more scalable solution might use classes with overrided operators.