[Chicago-talk] detecting whether a scalar is number or a string.

[Elliot Shank]

Shawn Carroll wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 2:48 PM, Richard Reina
> <richard at rushlogistics.com> wrote:
>> Can someone tell me please how I can test whether a string is
>> number or not.
>> 
>> so to differentiate from:
>> 
>> my $string = "anssds";
>> 
>> and
>> 
>> $string = "5879873454";
>> 
>> Thanks for your attention.  Have a great day! 
>> _______________________________________________
> 
> $string =~ m/[:digit:]/; -or- $string =~ m/[:alpha:];

Also see Scalar::Util::looks_like_number(), which actually asks the perl VM.