Re: need idiom - compare a number to a string

Since Perl will autostringify as needed, just check to see if $value looks like a number or not. I'd probably do something radically sub-optimal like

     $value = lookupString($value) if($value !~ /^\d+$/);
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I'm sure one of the monks who has Perl skills above mine (i.e. almost everybody) has a better way, but I think my fragment will avoid too many errors (I'd probably demonstrate paranoia by checking to see if $value is defined before the match)

added in update As chromatic pointed out, the regex I showed only checks for positive integers, with neither signs nor blank padding. Since the OP's posted code includes int($value), I'm concluding values including a decimal point or in exponential notation aren't a concern. The regex should probably look more like this:

$value =~ /^\s*[+-]?\s*\d+\s*$/
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which should deal with signed and unsigned integers, but will reject cases where $value includes a radix point or is in exponential notation.

emc

" The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents. " — Nathaniel S. Borenstein

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Re^2: need idiom - compare a number to a string by chromatic (Archbishop) on Mar 17, 2006 at 23:19 UTC
Your regex only catches positive integers, which may be okay -- but it's certainly not all valid numbers. Consider negative integers, rationals, and numbers in scientific notation, for exammple.	[reply]
Re^3: need idiom - compare a number to a string by ikegami (Patriarch) on Mar 18, 2006 at 00:08 UTC
It don't think we have to catch those (well, maybe negatives). It sounds like the OP is talking error codes or something similar, which wouldn't be floating point numbers.	[reply]