Question

Is there an operator in perl, or even a function in some module, that will get the magnitude of a number similar to what is denoted by the mathematical notation |x|.

e.g.

x = 42, y = -42
|x| = |y| = 42

If there isn’t one, what is the simplest way of extracting such a magnitude? I can think of two that I have used before:

$x = -42;

# quick regex for whole integers, can be extended to take decimals into account
$y = $x =~ /(\d+)/; 

# Using if statements
$y = $x*-1 if $x < 0;

I would have to create a new function to use either of these examples if I wanted to get the magnitude without adding extra lines to my code (I need to retrieve these magnitudes quite often). I am concerned that I might have missed something even easier.

Answer 1

There’s the abs function for that.

 $ perl -e 'print abs(-42), "\n";'
42