Perl 6 will have "big rats" that will represent 98/100 exactly. For now, you can use ints and do it yourself. Are you doing arithmetic on the value you fetch? I assume so, or it would not be converted from a string to a number. So, fetch the value, and use a regex to remove the decimal point and note how many digits were to the right of it originally. Now value X becomes (Y*Z) where Y is your integer and Z is the implicit power of ten. Do your math with Y, and also see what becomes of Z in the formulas but keep it implicit. When displaying stick the decimal in the string based on Z, but don't divide.