How can I check if a string represents an int, without using try/except?

Question

Is there any way to tell whether a string represents an integer (e.g., \'3\', \'-17\' but not \'3.14\' or \'asf

Answer 1

I guess the question is related with speed since the try/except has a time penalty:

 test data

First, I created a list of 200 strings, 100 failing strings and 100 numeric strings.

from random import shuffle
numbers = [u'+1'] * 100
nonumbers = [u'1abc'] * 100
testlist = numbers + nonumbers
shuffle(testlist)
testlist = np.array(testlist)

 numpy solution (only works with arrays and unicode)

np.core.defchararray.isnumeric can also work with unicode strings np.core.defchararray.isnumeric(u'+12') but it returns and array. So, it's a good solution if you have to do thousands of conversions and have missing data or non numeric data.

import numpy as np
%timeit np.core.defchararray.isnumeric(testlist)
10000 loops, best of 3: 27.9 µs per loop # 200 numbers per loop

try/except

def check_num(s):
  try:
    int(s)
    return True
  except:
    return False

def check_list(l):
  return [check_num(e) for e in l]

%timeit check_list(testlist)
1000 loops, best of 3: 217 µs per loop # 200 numbers per loop

Seems that numpy solution is much faster.