This module is about the numeric part of plain (string) Perl scalars. A scalar has a numeric value, which may be expressed in either the native integer type or the native floating point type. Many values are expressible both ways, in which case the exact representation is insignificant. To fully understand Perl arithmetic it is necessary to know about both of these representations, and the differing behaviours of numbers according to which way they are expressible. . This module provides functions to extract the numeric part of a scalar, classify a number by expressibility, and compare numbers across representations.