Using the strtod and strtol methods from the POSIX module, you can convert the strings that Perl reads to numbers that you can operate on. It also suggests a nice "is_numeric" method:

    # Begin quoting from <http://p3m.org/faq/C3/Q3.html>
    sub getnum {
        use POSIX qw(strtod);
        my $str = shift;
        $str =~ s/^\s+//;
        $str =~ s/\s+$//;
        $! = 0;
        my($num, $unparsed) = strtod($str);
        if (($str eq '') || ($unparsed != 0) || $!) {
            return undef;
        } else {
            return $num;
        }
    }

    sub is_numeric { defined getnum($_[0]) }
    # end quoting...

sub comp {
  use POSIX qw(strtol);
  my ($a, $b) = @_;

  if (is_numeric($a) && is_numeric($b)) {
    return (strtol($a * 100) == strtol($b * 100));
  } else {
    return ( $a eq $b );
  }
}
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