How do I tell if a variable has a numeric value in Perl?
Question
Is there a simple way in Perl that will allow me to determine if a given variable is numeric? Something along the lines of:
if (is_number($x))
{ ... }
would be ideal. A technique that won't throw warnings when the -w
switch is being used is certainly preferred.
Solution
Use Scalar::Util::looks_like_number()
which uses the internal Perl C API's looks_like_number() function, which is probably the most efficient way to do this.
Note that the strings "inf" and "infinity" are treated as numbers.
Example:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Scalar::Util qw(looks_like_number);
my @exprs = qw(1 5.25 0.001 1.3e8 foo bar 1dd inf infinity);
foreach my $expr (@exprs) {
print "$expr is", looks_like_number($expr) ? '' : ' not', " a number\n";
}
Gives this output:
1 is a number
5.25 is a number
0.001 is a number
1.3e8 is a number
foo is not a number
bar is not a number
1dd is not a number
inf is a number
infinity is a number
See also:
- perldoc Scalar::Util
- perldoc perlapi for
looks_like_number
OTHER TIPS
Check out the CPAN module Regexp::Common. I think it does exactly what you need and handles all the edge cases (e.g. real numbers, scientific notation, etc). e.g.
use Regexp::Common;
if ($var =~ /$RE{num}{real}/) { print q{a number}; }
The original question was how to tell if a variable was numeric, not if it "has a numeric value".
There are a few operators that have separate modes of operation for numeric and string operands, where "numeric" means anything that was originally a number or was ever used in a numeric context (e.g. in $x = "123"; 0+$x
, before the addition, $x
is a string, afterwards it is considered numeric).
One way to tell is this:
if ( length( do { no warnings "numeric"; $x & "" } ) ) {
print "$x is numeric\n";
}
A simple (and maybe simplistic) answer to the question is the content of $x
numeric is the following:
if ($x eq $x+0) { .... }
It does a textual comparison of the original $x
with the $x
converted to a numeric value.
Usually number validation is done with regular expressions. This code will determine if something is numeric as well as check for undefined variables as to not throw warnings:
sub is_integer {
defined $_[0] && $_[0] =~ /^[+-]?\d+$/;
}
sub is_float {
defined $_[0] && $_[0] =~ /^[+-]?\d+(\.\d+)?$/;
}
Here's some reading material you should look at.
Not perfect, but you can use a regex:
sub isnumber
{
shift =~ /^-?\d+\.?\d*$/;
}
I don't believe there is anything builtin to do it. For more than you ever wanted to see on the subject, see Perlmonks on Detecting Numeric
A slightly more robust regex can be found in Regexp::Common.
It sounds like you want to know if Perl thinks a variable is numeric. Here's a function that traps that warning:
sub is_number{
my $n = shift;
my $ret = 1;
$SIG{"__WARN__"} = sub {$ret = 0};
eval { my $x = $n + 1 };
return $ret
}
Another option is to turn off the warning locally:
{
no warnings "numeric"; # Ignore "isn't numeric" warning
... # Use a variable that might not be numeric
}
Note that non-numeric variables will be silently converted to 0, which is probably what you wanted anyway.
rexep not perfect... this is:
use Try::Tiny;
sub is_numeric {
my ($x) = @_;
my $numeric = 1;
try {
use warnings FATAL => qw/numeric/;
0 + $x;
}
catch {
$numeric = 0;
};
return $numeric;
}
Try this:
If (($x !~ /\D/) && ($x ne "")) { ... }
I found this interesting though
if ( $value + 0 eq $value) {
# A number
push @args, $value;
} else {
# A string
push @args, "'$value'";
}
Personally I think that the way to go is to rely on Perl's internal context to make the solution bullet-proof. A good regexp could match all the valid numeric values and none of the non-numeric ones (or vice versa), but as there is a way of employing the same logic the interpreter is using it should be safer to rely on that directly.
As I tend to run my scripts with -w
, I had to combine the idea of comparing the result of "value plus zero" to the original value with the no warnings
based approach of @ysth:
do {
no warnings "numeric";
if ($x + 0 ne $x) { return "not numeric"; } else { return "numeric"; }
}
You can use Regular Expressions to determine if $foo is a number (or not).
Take a look here: How do I determine whether a scalar is a number
if ( defined $x && $x !~ m/\D/ ) {} or $x = 0 if ! $x; if ( $x !~ m/\D/) {}
This is a slight variation on Veekay's answer but let me explain my reasoning for the change.
Performing a regex on an undefined value will cause error spew and will cause the code to exit in many if not most environments. Testing if the value is defined or setting a default case like i did in the alternative example before running the expression will, at a minimum, save your error log.
This function work for me:
sub IS_Integer()
{
my $Text = shift;
my $Integer = 0;
if ($Text =~ /\D/)
{
$Integer = 1;
}
if ($Text =~ /^\d+$/)
{
$Integer = 1;
}
if ($Text =~ /^-?\d+$/)
{
$Integer = 1;
}
if ($Text =~ /^[+-]?\d+$/)
{
$Integer = 1;
}
if ($Text =~ /^-?\d+\.?\d*$/)
{
$Integer = 1;
}
if ($Text =~ /^-?(?:\d+(?:\.\d*)?&\.\d+)$/)
{
$Integer = 1;
}
if ($Text =~ /^([+-]?)(?=\d&\.\d)\d*(\.\d*)?([Ee]([+-]?\d+))?$/)
{
$Integer = 1;
}
return $Integer;
}