in reply to Re: sorting scientific numbers
in thread sorting scientific numbers

This is somewhat tangetial, but in a numerical context perl will coerce any string that begins with something recognizable as a number into a number. That's why "0 but true" is a perfectly good1 "true zero." See Is '2x' + '3y' == 5 documented? and the man page for the C atof function.

1Well, not quite. As it turns out '0 but true' has a "special dispensation" that disables the warnings that perl would have otherwise have generated. E.g.: 
% perl -wle 'print "OK" if "0 but true" < 1'
OK
% perl -wle 'print "OK" if "0 but righteous" < 1'
Argument "0 but righteous" isn't numeric in numeric lt (<) at -e line 
+1.
OK

[download]

the lowliest monk

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom