I think I smell a fish... since when does eq throw a "not numeric?"

perl -e "my $lines1 = 7; my $lines2=8; if ($lines1 eq $lines2) {print 
+'lines are eq';} else {print 'wtf';}"
wtf

perl -e "my $lines1 ='foo'; my $lines2='bar'; if ($lines1 eq $lines2) 
+{print 'lines are eq';} else {print 'wtf';}"
wtf

perl -e "my $lines1 ='foo'; my $lines2='foo'; if ($lines1 eq $lines2) 
+{print 'lines are eq';} else {print 'wtf';}"
lines are eq
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Is there something I'm missing or do the reported (code + error) seem to be misaligned?
Phrased another way, are you sure if($lines1[$_] eq $lines2[$_]) is line 14 -- i.e., the source of the "not numeric"?