[Bioperl-l] limiting E value - Argument "e-134" isn't numeric?

[Nandita Mullapudi]

I am using the following line in my script to limit e-values, and I 
remember having used it before without error messages, but now...

the line is:  if ($hit_significance < 0.001 && $i < 3)
                      { print ...}

and the error message I get is

Argument "e-134" isn't numeric in numeric lt (<) at try-exclude.pl line 31,
         <GEN871> line 12023 (#1)
(W numeric) The indicated string was fed as an argument to an operator
     that expected a numeric value instead.  If you're fortunate the message
     will identify which operator was so unfortunate.

any quick insight appreciated. :)
-Nandita