How do I tell if a variable has a numeric value in Perl?

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";
}

If the bitwise feature is enabled, that makes & only a numeric operator and adds a separate string &. operator, you must disable it:

if ( length( do { no if $] >= 5.022, "feature", "bitwise"; no warnings "numeric"; $x & "" } ) ) {
    print "$x is numeric\n";
}

(bitwise is available in perl 5.022 and above, and enabled by default if you use 5.028; or above.)

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