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Postings from June 2008
On Jun 15, 10:09 pm, esia...@yahoo.com (William) wrote:
> Hello, if I use the sprintf function it would give me a number STRING, but not number, so I have to trick the string to become number by adding and subtracting the number with 1. Is there a better way than this ? I want it to be a number data type and not string.
>
> e.g
>
> my $strNumber = sprintf("%04d", 123);
> my $number = $strNumber + 1 - 1; # to trick Perl to convert to number datatype instead of string.
The only improvement I can see is the rather obvious:
my $number = 123;
The sprintf() function *always* returns a string (PV). It therefore
follows that if you want to convert what sprintf() returned into a
number (IV, UV, or NV) then you *must* perform some "trick" on that
returned value. You can do it as:
my $number = sprintf("%04d", 123) + 1 - 1; # your original approach
or
my $number = sprintf("%04d", 123) + 0;
or
my $number = sprintf("%04d", 123) * 1;
And there are other similar convoluted approaches available to you.
You can possibly even get away with such things as:
my $number = exp(log(sprintf("%04d", 123))); # not recommending
this :-)
The thing that strikes me as strange is this:
Given that sprintf() always returns a string, and given that you need
a number, why on earth are you using sprintf() in the first place ?
(Perhaps it was just for demonstration purposes ?)
Cheers,
Rob
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