How do I check if a string is a number (float)?

Question

What is the best possible way to check if a string can be represented as a number in Python?

The function I currently have right now is:

def is_numb         


        

Answer 1

RyanN suggests

If you want to return False for a NaN and Inf, change line to x = float(s); return (x == x) and (x - 1 != x). This should return True for all floats except Inf and NaN

But this doesn't quite work, because for sufficiently large floats, x-1 == x returns true. For example, 2.0**54 - 1 == 2.0**54