How to determine if a string is a number with C++?

Question

I\'ve had quite a bit of trouble trying to write a function that checks if a string is a number. For a game I am writing I just need to check if a line from the file I am r

Answer 1

I'd suggest a regex approach. A full regex-match (for example, using boost::regex) with

-?[0-9]+([\.][0-9]+)?

would show whether the string is a number or not. This includes positive and negative numbers, integer as well as decimal.

Other variations:

[0-9]+([\.][0-9]+)?

(only positive)

-?[0-9]+

(only integer)

[0-9]+

(only positive integer)

Answer 2

The most efficient way would be just to iterate over the string until you find a non-digit character. If there are any non-digit characters, you can consider the string not a number.

bool is_number(const std::string& s)
{
    std::string::const_iterator it = s.begin();
    while (it != s.end() && std::isdigit(*it)) ++it;
    return !s.empty() && it == s.end();
}

Or if you want to do it the C++11 way:

bool is_number(const std::string& s)
{
    return !s.empty() && std::find_if(s.begin(), 
        s.end(), [](unsigned char c) { return !std::isdigit(c); }) == s.end();
}

As pointed out in the comments below, this only works for positive integers. If you need to detect negative integers or fractions, you should go with a more robust library-based solution. Although, adding support for negative integers is pretty trivial.

Answer 3

I just wanted to throw in this idea that uses iteration but some other code does that iteration:

#include <string.h>

bool is_number(const std::string& s)
{
    return( strspn( s.c_str(), "-.0123456789" ) == s.size() );
}

It's not robust like it should be when checking for a decimal point or minus sign since it allows there to be more than one of each and in any location. The good thing is that it's a single line of code and doesn't require a third-party library.

Take out the '.' and '-' if positive integers are all that are allowed.

Answer 4

Try this:

bool checkDigit(string str)
{  
   int n=str.length();

   for(int i=0;    i   < n ;   i++)
   {
     if(str[i]<'0' || str[i]>'9')
       return false;
   }

   return true;
}

Answer 5

Could you simply use sscanf's return code to determine if it's an int?

bool is_number(const std::string& s)
{
    int value;
    int result = sscanf(valueStr.c_str(), "%d", &value);
    return (result != EOF && readResult != 0);
}

Answer 6

The simplest I can think of in c++

bool isNumber(string s) {
    if(s.size()==0) return false;
    for(int i=0;i<s.size();i++) {
        if((s[i]>='0' && s[i]<='9')==false) {
            return false;
        }
    }
    return true;
}

Working code sample: https://ideone.com/nRX51Y