You might want to look at Regexp::Common::number in general, but I don't see anything ready-made to do what you want. Here's a pattern I might use:
$dataEntry =~ m{ \A # beginning of string
\+? # optional plus sign
\d+ # one or more digits
\z # end of string
}xms
Using Regexp::Common, that might be:
use Regexp::Common qw( number );
$dataEntry =~ /$RE{num}{int}/ && $dataEntry == abs $dataEntry
If you want to allow for white space in your data entry, you could add \s* into your patterns.
Update: After consideration of the contributions of the other monks, I think this is a better expression than the one I have above:
m{ \A # beginning of string
\+? # optional plus sign
[0-9]* # optional digits, including zero
[1-9] # mandatory non-zero digit
[0-9]* # optional digits, including zero
\z # end of string
}xms
This incorporates Nkuvu's observation that a value of zero should not be allowed and mreece's suggestion that \d is not always the best way to match digits (though I find this counterintuitive). It also passes my own test suite.
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