Language: Data types: Numbers

Numbers in the Puppet language are normal integers and floating point numbers.

You can work with numbers using Puppet’s arithmetic operators.

Syntax

Numbers are written without quotation marks, and can consist only of:

  • Digits
  • An optional negative sign (-; this is actually the unary negation operator rather than part of the number)
    • Explicit positive signs (+) aren’t allowed, since there’s no unary + operator.
  • An optional decimal point (which results in a floating point value)
  • A prefix, for octal or hexidecimal bases
  • An optional e or E for scientific notation of floating point values

Integers

Integers are numbers without decimal points.

If you divide two integers, the result will not be a float; instead, Puppet will truncate the remainder. (That is, 2/3 == 0.)

Floating point numbers

Floating point numbers (“floats”) are numbers that include a fractional value after a decimal point (even if that fractional value is zero, like 2.0).

If an expression includes both integer and float values, the result will be a float.

$some_number = 8 * -7.992           # evaluates to -63.936
$another_number = $some_number / 4  # evaluates to -15.984

Floating point numbers between -1 and 1 cannot start with a bare decimal point; they must have a zero before the decimal point.

$product = 8 * .12 # syntax error
$product = 8 * 0.12 # OK

You can express floating point numbers in scientific notation: append e or E plus an exponent, and the preceding number will be multiplied by 10 to the power of that exponent. Numbers in scientific notation are always floats.

$product = 8 * 3e5  # evaluates to 240000.0

Octal and hexadecimal integers

Integer values can be expressed in decimal notation (base 10), octal notation (base 8), and hexadecimal notation (base 16).

  • Non-zero decimal integers must not start with a 0.
  • Octal values have a prefix of 0, which can be followed by a sequence of octal digits 0-7.
  • Hexadecimal values have a prefix of 0x or 0X, which can be followed by hexadecimal digits 0-9, a-f, or A-F.

Floats can’t be expressed in octal or hex.

# octal
$value = 0777   # evaluates to decimal 511
$value = 0789   # Error, invalid octal
$value = 0777.3 # Error, invalid octal

# hexadecimal
$value = 0x777 # evaluates to decimal 1911
$value = 0xdef # evaluates to decimal 3567
$value = 0Xdef # same as above
$value = 0xDEF # same as above
$value = 0xLSD # Error, invalid hex

Converting numbers to strings

Numbers are automatically converted to strings when interpolated into a string. The automatic conversion uses decimal (base 10) notation.

If you need to convert numbers to non-decimal string representations, you can use the sprintf function.

Converting strings to numbers

The arithmetic operators will automatically convert strings to numbers.

In all other contexts (resource attributes, function arguments, etc.), Puppet won’t automatically convert strings to numbers, but you can:

  • Add 0 to manually convert a string to a number. (For example, $mystring = "85"; $mynum = 0 + $mystring.)
  • Use the scanf function to manually extract numbers from strings. This function can also account for surrounding non-numerical text.

The Integer data type

The data type of integers is Integer.

By default, Integer matches whole numbers of any size (within the limits of available memory).

You can use parameters to restrict which values Integer will match.

Parameters

The full signature for Integer is:

Integer[<MIN VALUE>, <MAX VALUE>]

All of these parameters are optional. They must be listed in order; if you need to specify a later parameter, you must specify values for any prior ones.

Position Parameter Data Type Default Value Description
1 Min value Integer negative infinity The minimum value for the integer. This parameter accepts the special value default, which will use its default value.
2 Max value Integer infinity The maximum value for the integer. This parameter accepts the special value default, which will use its default value.

Practically speaking, the integer size limit is the range of a 64-bit signed integer (−9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807), which is the maximum size that can roundtrip safely between the components in the Puppet ecosystem.

Examples

  • Integer — matches any integer.
  • Integer[0] — matches any integer greater than or equal to 0.
  • Integer[default, 0] — matches any integer less than or equal to 0.
  • Integer[2, 8] — matches any integer from 2 to 8, inclusive.

The Float data type

The data type of floating point numbers is Float.

By default, Float matches floating point numbers within the limitations of Ruby’s Float class. Practically speaking, this means a 64 bit double precision floating point value.

You can use parameters to restrict which values Float will match.

Parameters

The full signature for Float is:

Float[<MIN VALUE>, <MAX VALUE>]

All of these parameters are optional. They must be listed in order; if you need to specify a later parameter, you must specify values for any prior ones.

Position Parameter Data Type Default Value Description
1 Min value Float negative infinity The minimum value for the float. This parameter accepts the special value default, which will use its default value.
2 Max value Float infinity The maximum value for the float. This parameter accepts the special value default, which will use its default value.

Examples

  • Float — matches any floating point number.
  • Float[1.6] — matches any floating point number greater than or equal to 1.6.
  • Float[1.6, 3.501] — matches any floating point number from 1.6 to 3.501, inclusive.

The Numeric data type

The data type of all numbers, both integer and floating point, is Numeric.

It matches any integer or floating point number, and takes no parameters.

Numeric is equivalent to Variant[Integer, Float]. If you need to set size limits but still accept both integers and floats, you can use the abstract Variant type to construct an appropriate data type, e.g. Variant[Integer[-3,3], Float[-3.0,3.0]].