Converting String to Integers the safe way

First, note that version C is not bulletproof: it would reject negative numbers, and would not catch numbers that are too large.

Version B is OK, yet it makes the caller change the coding style: rather than catching an error and processing it together with other errors, the caller would need to check for -1 all the time. This may be suboptimal in situations where you read multiple integers, but the error processing does not depend on which particular one has failed. In addition, new coders using your API may forget to check for -1, and use the error code inadvertently.

That's why I would stay with the first option: the code using version A would look instantly familiar to anyone who knows Java API, without the need to learn what happens inside your function.

Guava offers a utility method for this which returns null in case your String can't be parsed.

https://google.github.io/guava/releases/19.0/api/docs/com/google/common/primitives/Ints.html#tryParse(java.lang.String)

Integer result = Ints.tryParse("1");  //returns 1
Integer result = Ints.tryParse("-1"); //returns -1
Integer result = Ints.tryParse("a");  //returns null