You don't have to worry about that, Perl does it for you.
If you use a numerical compare:

if ($var == 0 )
[download]

it'll be a number.

If you use a string compare:

if ($var eq "0")
[download]

then it'll be a string.

This actually took me quite a long time to get the hang of, sadly.

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.