Perl in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Arithmetic Operators

Binary ** is the exponentiation operator. Note that it binds even more tightly than unary minus, so -2**4 is -(2**4), not (-2)**4. Also note that ** has right associativity, so:

$e = 2 ** 3 ** 4;

evaluates to 2 to the 81st power, not 8 to the 4th power.

The * (multiply) and / (divide) operators work exactly as you might expect, multiplying or dividing their two operands. Division is done in floating-point mode, unless integer mode in enabled (via use integer).

The % (modulus) operator converts its operands to integers before finding the remainder according to integer division. For the same operation in floating-point mode, you may prefer to use the fmod( ) function from the POSIX module (see Chapter 8).