On Tue, 2003-10-07 at 17:41, Tels wrote: > But why does > > perl -le "print +(81**3)**(1/3)" > > print 81 and not 80.99999999999999? $ perl -le '$#="%.16g"; print +(81**3)**(1/3)' 80.99999999999999 perldoc perlvar says: $OFMT $# The output format for printed numbers. This vari- able is a half-hearted attempt to emulate awk's OFMT variable. There are times, however, when awk and Perl have differing notions of what counts as numeric. The initial value is "%.ng", where n is the value of the macro DBL_DIG from your system's float.h. This is different from awk's default OFMT setting of "%.6g", so you need to set $# explicitly to get awk's value. (Mnemonic: # is the number sign.) Use of $# is deprecated. - Alex V. -- Networking -- only one letter away from not working.