perl function abs

In Perl, the abs function returns the absolute value of a number. It takes a single argument which can be an integer, a floating-point number, or a numeric string.

Here is an example that demonstrates the use of the abs function:

my $num1 = 5;
my $num2 = -3.5;
my $num3 = "-10.25";

print abs($num1) . "\n";   # Output: 5
print abs($num2) . "\n";   # Output: 3.5
print abs($num3) . "\n";   # Output: 10.25

In the above example, we declare three variables $num1, $num2, and $num3 with different numeric values. We then use the abs function to get the absolute value of each of these variables and print them to the console.

Note that the abs function can also be used with variables that contain non-numeric values. In such cases, Perl tries to convert the variable to a numeric value before calculating the absolute value. For example:

my $str = "hello";
print abs($str) . "\n";   # Output: 0

In the above example, $str contains a string value which cannot be converted to a numeric value. Therefore, Perl treats it as a numeric value of 0 and returns the absolute value of 0, which is 0.