This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq4.pod, which
comes with the standard Perl distribution. These postings aim to
reduce the number of repeated questions as well as allow the community
to review and update the answers. The latest version of the complete
perlfaq is at http://faq.perl.org .

--------------------------------------------------------------------

4.1: Why am I getting long decimals (eg, 19.9499999999999) instead of the numbers I should be getting (eg, 19.95)?

Internally, your computer represents floating-point numbers in binary.
Digital (as in powers of two) computers cannot store all numbers
exactly. Some real numbers lose precision in the process. This is a
problem with how computers store numbers and affects all computer
languages, not just Perl.

perlnumber shows the gory details of number representations and
conversions.

To limit the number of decimal places in your numbers, you can use the
printf or sprintf function. See the "Floating Point Arithmetic" for more
details.

printf "%%.2f", 10/3;

my $number = sprintf "%%.2f", 10/3;