I'm assuming you want the number reduced to 83.977? If so, try sprintf. 
use strict;

my $number = 83.9774726111 ;

print sprintf("%.3f", $number);

# produces 83.977

[download]

But you should have been able to find this in any of the Camel books (Learning Perl, Perl Programming, etc).

elbow

In reply to Re: reducing numbers by elbow
in thread reducing numbers by Anonymous Monk

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