Summary: in this tutorial, you’ll learn about two kinds of Perl numbers: integer and floating-point numbers.
Perl integers
Integers are whole numbers that have no digits after the decimal points i.e 10, -20 or 100.
In Perl, integers are often expressed as decimal integers, base 10. The following illustrates some integer numbers:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
$x = 20;
$y = 100;
$z = -200;Code language: Perl (perl)When the integer number is big, you often use a comma as a separator to make it easier to read e.g., 123,763,213.
However, Perl already uses a comma (,) as a separator in the list so for integer numbers Perl uses an underscore character ( _) instead. In this case, 123,763,213 is written in Perl as 123_763_213.
Take a look at the following example:
my $a = 123_763_213;
print($a, "\n"); # 123763213Code language: Perl (perl)In the output of the example above, Perl uses no comma or underscore as the separator.
Besides the decimal format, Perl also supports other formats including binary, octal, and hexadecimal.
The following table shows you prefixes for formatting with binary, octal, and hexadecimal integers.
| Number | Format |
|---|---|
| 0b123 | Binary integer using a prefix of 0b |
| 0255 | Octal integer using a prefix of 0 |
| 0xABC | Hexadecimal integer using a prefix of 0x |
All the following integer numbers are 12 in Perl:
12
0b1100
014
0xCCode language: Perl (perl)Perl floating-point numbers
You use floating-point numbers to store real numbers. Perl represents floating-point numbers in two forms:
- Fixed point: the decimal point is fixed in the number to denote fractional part starts e.g.,
100.25 - Scientific: consists of a significand with the actual number value and an exponent representing the power of 10 that the significand is multiplied by, for example,
+1.0025e2or-1.0025E2is100.25.
The floating-point number holds 8 bytes, with 11 bits reserved for the exponent and 53 bits for significand.
The range of floating-point numbers is essentially determined by the standard C library of the underlying platform where Perl is running.
In this tutorial, you have learned two kinds of Perl numbers including integer and floating-point numbers.
