how to test for numeric user input?

[Gary Merrick]

I'm taking a beginning Perl class, and we haven't gotten to pattern matching
yet.  I need to somehow test for user input being numeric.  I think.  <:-)

The second "elsif" is where I'm hung up.  It seems to catch any kind of invalid
input, text or numeric.  Also, without the first "elsif" statement, users typing
"exit" will be given an "Invalid input" error before exiting.  (sigh)  Could
somebody please point me in the right direction?  Any help would be very much
appreciated.

Here's what I have so far:


my $input = 'undef';
until ($input eq "exit") {
        print "\nPlease type one of [list, imdb_number, exit]: ";
        chomp ($input = <STDIN>);
        if ("$input" eq "list") {
        # do stuff
        }
        elsif ("$input" eq "exit") {
        # Do nothing.
        # Without this part, user gets "Invalid input" message before exiting.
        }
        # This part seems to catch any kind of invalid input, and it never gets
        # to "else".  Why?  I guess I need to test for numeric input (if it's not,
        # it goes to "else"), and then see if the number matches one of these:
        elsif ("$input" == "0120611"||"0106308"||"0088247"||"0267804"||"0094074"||
                "0102798"||"0120382"||"0196229"||"0272152"||"0109830") {
                # do stuff
        }
        else {
                print "\n\tInvalid input.  Please try again.\n";
        }
}


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