How can I check if a string has a numeric value in it in Python?

Question:

For example, I want to check a string and if it is not convertible to integer(with int()), how can I detect that?

Asked By: Figen Güngör

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Answers:

You can always try it:

try:
   a = int(yourstring)
except ValueError:
   print "can't convert"

Note that this method outshines isdigit if you want to know if you can convert a string to a floating point number using float

Answered By: mgilson

Use the .isdigit() method:

>>> '123'.isdigit()
True
>>> '1a23'.isdigit()
False

Quoting the documentation:

Return true if all characters in the string are digits and there is at least one character, false otherwise.

For unicode strings or Python 3 strings, you’ll need to use a more precise definition and use the unicode.isdecimal() / str.isdecimal() instead; not all Unicode digits are interpretable as decimal numbers. U+00B2 SUPERSCRIPT 2 is a digit, but not a decimal, for example.

Answered By: Martijn Pieters
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