Scalars are either numbers or a string of characters as in C although in both cases there are significant differences
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numbers and strings are not explicitly typed
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Note Perl is "safer" than JavaScript in this regard and it is very rare that numbers and strings are confused
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Numbers are stored internally as integers if this represents them adequately -- otherwise as double-precision numbers
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Perl and the runtime system make certain that this is transparent to user
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Wolfram's SMP (the forerunner of Mathematica) at Caltech (which I worked on) also made the more extreme choice of everything being double precision
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For example 1, 5.0, 4.5E23, and 7.45 E-15, are all numbers
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Octal and Hexadecimal numbers are allowed with
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0377 (initial zero) assumed to be octal and so is equal to 255 decimal
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0X or 0x represents hexadecimal with letters A to F corresponding to numbers 10 to 15 as normal. 0XFF is hex FF or 255 decimal
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