whether perl or me mad?

hai ,
i wrote a simple program ... though i had over 24 months experience in perl.
This program behaves not as i expected
Anybody give me a thought:

vi if.pl
-----------------
use strict;

my $temp;

print " Enter Temperature : ";
$temp = <STDIN>;
if($temp <40)
{
print "n Normal n";
}
else
{
print "n Too Hot n";
}
~
~
~
~
------------

ChinnaVi $
ChinnaVi $
ChinnaVi $ perl if .pl
Can't open perl script "if": No such file or directory
ChinnaVi $ perl if.pl
Enter Temperature : 12

Normal
ChinnaVi $ perl if.pl
Enter Temperature : 56

Too Hot
ChinnaVi $ perl if.pl
Enter Temperature : as

Normal
ChinnaVi $


Why when i give "as" as Input Gives "Normal".

Thanks in Advance

vijay

i think your problem is that perl is evaluating the string as a number, and as id evaluating to < 40. so, you should validate the input if you want to make sure that you are getting numbers. also, i guess it didn't seem to be a problem for you, but, i would chomp() your variable from STDIN to make sure you dont have any n's or r's in your variable.