How to Check Is a String or Number

How to check if a String is numeric in Java

With Apache Commons Lang 3.5 and above: NumberUtils.isCreatable or StringUtils.isNumeric.

With Apache Commons Lang 3.4 and below: NumberUtils.isNumber or StringUtils.isNumeric.

You can also use StringUtils.isNumericSpace which returns true for empty strings and ignores internal spaces in the string. Another way is to use NumberUtils.isParsable which basically checks the number is parsable according to Java. (The linked javadocs contain detailed examples for each method.)

Check whether variable is number or string in JavaScript

If you're dealing with literal notation, and not constructors, you can use typeof:.

typeof "Hello World"; // string
typeof 123;           // number

If you're creating numbers and strings via a constructor, such as var foo = new String("foo"), you should keep in mind that typeof may return object for foo.

Perhaps a more foolproof method of checking the type would be to utilize the method found in underscore.js (annotated source can be found here),

var toString = Object.prototype.toString;

_.isString = function (obj) {
  return toString.call(obj) == '[object String]';
}

This returns a boolean true for the following:

_.isString("Jonathan"); // true
_.isString(new String("Jonathan")); // true

In Typescript, How to check if a string is Numeric

The way to convert a string to a number is with Number, not parseFloat.

Number('1234') // 1234
Number('9BX9') // NaN

You can also use the unary plus operator if you like shorthand:

+'1234' // 1234
+'9BX9' // NaN

Be careful when checking against NaN (the operator === and !== don't work as expected with NaN). Use:

 isNaN(+maybeNumber) // returns true if NaN, otherwise false

How to check if a string is a number?

Forget about ASCII code checks, use isdigit or isnumber (see man isnumber). The first function checks whether the character is 0–9, the second one also accepts various other number characters depending on the current locale.

There may even be better functions to do the check – the important lesson is that this is a bit more complex than it looks, because the precise definition of a “number string” depends on the particular locale and the string encoding.

Identify if a string is a number

int n;
bool isNumeric = int.TryParse("123", out n);

Update As of C# 7:

var isNumeric = int.TryParse("123", out int n);

or if you don't need the number you can discard the out parameter

var isNumeric = int.TryParse("123", out _);

The var s can be replaced by their respective types!

Detect whether a Python string is a number or a letter

Check if string is nonnegative digit (integer) and alphabet

You may use str.isdigit() and str.isalpha() to check whether a given string is a nonnegative integer (0 or greater) and alphabetical character, respectively.

Sample Results:

# For alphabet
>>> 'A'.isdigit()
False
>>> 'A'.isalpha()
True

# For digit
>>> '1'.isdigit()
True
>>> '1'.isalpha()
False

Check for strings as positive/negative - integer/float

str.isdigit() returns False if the string is a negative number or a float number. For example:

# returns `False` for float
>>> '123.3'.isdigit()
False
# returns `False` for negative number
>>> '-123'.isdigit()
False

If you want to also check for the negative integers and float, then you may write a custom function to check for it as:

def is_number(n):
    try:
        float(n)   # Type-casting the string to `float`.
                   # If string is not a valid `float`, 
                   # it'll raise `ValueError` exception
    except ValueError:
        return False
    return True

Sample Run:

>>> is_number('123')    # positive integer number
True

>>> is_number('123.4')  # positive float number
True
 
>>> is_number('-123')   # negative integer number
True

>>> is_number('-123.4') # negative `float` number
True

>>> is_number('abc')    # `False` for "some random" string
False

Discard "NaN" (not a number) strings while checking for number

The above functions will return True for the "NAN" (Not a number) string because for Python it is valid float representing it is not a number. For example:

>>> is_number('NaN')
True

In order to check whether the number is "NaN", you may use math.isnan() as:

>>> import math
>>> nan_num = float('nan')

>>> math.isnan(nan_num)
True

Or if you don't want to import additional library to check this, then you may simply check it via comparing it with itself using ==. Python returns False when nan float is compared with itself. For example:

# `nan_num` variable is taken from above example
>>> nan_num == nan_num
False

Hence, above function is_number can be updated to return False for "NaN" as:

def is_number(n):
    is_number = True
    try:
        num = float(n)
        # check for "nan" floats
        is_number = num == num   # or use `math.isnan(num)`
    except ValueError:
        is_number = False
    return is_number

Sample Run:

>>> is_number('Nan')   # not a number "Nan" string
False

>>> is_number('nan')   # not a number string "nan" with all lower cased
False

>>> is_number('123')   # positive integer
True

>>> is_number('-123')  # negative integer
True

>>> is_number('-1.12') # negative `float`
True

>>> is_number('abc')   # "some random" string
False

Allow Complex Number like "1+2j" to be treated as valid number

The above function will still return you False for the complex numbers. If you want your is_number function to treat complex numbers as valid number, then you need to type cast your passed string to complex() instead of float(). Then your is_number function will look like:

def is_number(n):
    is_number = True
    try:
        #      v type-casting the number here as `complex`, instead of `float`
        num = complex(n)
        is_number = num == num
    except ValueError:
        is_number = False
    return is_number

Sample Run:

>>> is_number('1+2j')    # Valid 
True                     #      : complex number 

>>> is_number('1+ 2j')   # Invalid 
False                    #      : string with space in complex number represetantion
                         #        is treated as invalid complex number

>>> is_number('123')     # Valid
True                     #      : positive integer

>>> is_number('-123')    # Valid 
True                     #      : negative integer

>>> is_number('abc')     # Invalid 
False                    #      : some random string, not a valid number

>>> is_number('nan')     # Invalid
False                    #      : not a number "nan" string

PS: Each operation for each check depending on the type of number comes with additional overhead. Choose the version of is_number function which fits your requirement.

How can I check if a string is a valid number?

2nd October 2020: note that many bare-bones approaches are fraught with subtle bugs (eg. whitespace, implicit partial parsing, radix, coercion of arrays etc.) that many of the answers here fail to take into account. The following implementation might work for you, but note that it does not cater for number separators other than the decimal point ".":

function isNumeric(str) {
  if (typeof str != "string") return false // we only process strings!  
  return !isNaN(str) && // use type coercion to parse the _entirety_ of the string (`parseFloat` alone does not do this)...
         !isNaN(parseFloat(str)) // ...and ensure strings of whitespace fail
}

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To check if a variable (including a string) is a number, check if it is not a number:

This works regardless of whether the variable content is a string or number.

isNaN(num)         // returns true if the variable does NOT contain a valid number

Examples

isNaN(123)         // false
isNaN('123')       // false
isNaN('1e10000')   // false (This translates to Infinity, which is a number)
isNaN('foo')       // true
isNaN('10px')      // true
isNaN('')          // false
isNaN(' ')         // false
isNaN(false)       // false

Of course, you can negate this if you need to. For example, to implement the IsNumeric example you gave:

function isNumeric(num){
  return !isNaN(num)
}

To convert a string containing a number into a number:

Only works if the string only contains numeric characters, else it returns NaN.

+num               // returns the numeric value of the string, or NaN 
                   // if the string isn't purely numeric characters

Examples

+'12'              // 12
+'12.'             // 12
+'12..'            // NaN
+'.12'             // 0.12
+'..12'            // NaN
+'foo'             // NaN
+'12px'            // NaN

To convert a string loosely to a number

Useful for converting '12px' to 12, for example:

parseInt(num)      // extracts a numeric value from the 
                   // start of the string, or NaN.

Examples

parseInt('12')     // 12
parseInt('aaa')    // NaN
parseInt('12px')   // 12
parseInt('foo2')   // NaN      These last three may
parseInt('12a5')   // 12       be different from what
parseInt('0x10')   // 16       you expected to see.

Floats

Bear in mind that, unlike +num, parseInt (as the name suggests) will convert a float into an integer by chopping off everything following the decimal point (if you want to use parseInt() because of this behaviour, you're probably better off using another method instead):

+'12.345'          // 12.345
parseInt(12.345)   // 12
parseInt('12.345') // 12

Empty strings

Empty strings may be a little counter-intuitive. +num converts empty strings or strings with spaces to zero, and isNaN() assumes the same:

+''                // 0
+'   '             // 0
isNaN('')          // false
isNaN('   ')       // false

But parseInt() does not agree:

parseInt('')       // NaN
parseInt('   ')    // NaN

How do I check if a string represents a number (float or int)?

Which, not only is ugly and slow

I'd dispute both.

A regex or other string parsing method would be uglier and slower.

I'm not sure that anything much could be faster than the above. It calls the function and returns. Try/Catch doesn't introduce much overhead because the most common exception is caught without an extensive search of stack frames.

The issue is that any numeric conversion function has two kinds of results

• A number, if the number is valid
• A status code (e.g., via errno) or exception to show that no valid number could be parsed.

C (as an example) hacks around this a number of ways. Python lays it out clearly and explicitly.

I think your code for doing this is perfect.

Checking to see if a string is an integer or float

If the string is convertable to integer, it should be digits only. It should be noted that this approach, as @cwallenpoole said, does NOT work with negative inputs beacuse of the '-' character. You could do:

if NumberString.isdigit():
    Number = int(NumberString)
else:
    Number = float(NumberString)

If you already have Number confirmed as a float, you can always use is_integer (works with negatives):

if Number.is_integer():
    Number = int(Number)

How to check if a variable is an integer or a string?

In my opinion you have two options:

• Just try to convert it to an int, but catch the exception:

  try:
      value = int(value)
  except ValueError:
      pass  # it was a string, not an int.
  

  This is the Ask Forgiveness approach.

• Explicitly test if there are only digits in the string:

  value.isdigit()
  

  str.isdigit() returns True only if all characters in the string are digits (0-9).

  The unicode / Python 3 str type equivalent is unicode.isdecimal() / str.isdecimal(); only Unicode decimals can be converted to integers, as not all digits have an actual integer value (U+00B2 SUPERSCRIPT 2 is a digit, but not a decimal, for example).

  This is often called the Ask Permission approach, or Look Before You Leap.

The latter will not detect all valid int() values, as whitespace and + and - are also allowed in int() values. The first form will happily accept ' +10 ' as a number, the latter won't.

If your expect that the user normally will input an integer, use the first form. It is easier (and faster) to ask for forgiveness rather than for permission in that case.

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