Most elegant isNumeric() solution for java

Question

I\'m porting a small snippet of PHP code to java right now, and I was relying on the function is_numeric($x) to determine if $x is a number or not. Th

Answer 1

In a strongly typed language, a generic isNumeric(String num) method is not very useful. 13214384348934918434441 is numeric, but won't fit in most types. Many of those where is does fit won't return the same value.

As Colin has noted, carrying numbers in Strings withing the application is not recommended. The isNumberic function should only be applicable for input data on interface methods. These should have a more precise definition than isNumeric. Others have provided various solutions. Regular expressions can be used to test a number of conditions at once, including String length.