c:\@Work\Perl\monks>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @ra = qw(foo 2bar 123baz quux999 x999x);
 for my $s ('', @ra) {
   no warnings 'numeric';
   print qq{'$s' == }, 0+$s;
   }
"
'' == 0
'foo' == 0
'2bar' == 2
'123baz' == 123
'quux999' == 0
'x999x' == 0