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

With C++11 compiler, for non-negative integers I would use something like this (note the :: instead of std::):

bool is_number(const std::string &s) {
  return !s.empty() && std::all_of(s.begin(), s.end(), ::isdigit);
}

http://ideone.com/OjVJWh


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.


Why reinvent the wheel? The C standard library (available in C++ as well) has a function that does exactly this:

char* p;
long converted = strtol(s, &p, 10);
if (*p) {
    // conversion failed because the input wasn't a number
}
else {
    // use converted
}

If you want to handle fractions or scientific notation, go with strtod instead (you'll get a double result).

If you want to allow hexadecimal and octal constants in C/C++ style ("0xABC"), then make the last parameter 0 instead.

Your function then can be written as

bool isParam(string line)
{
    char* p;
    strtol(line.c_str(), &p, 10);
    return *p == 0;
}

Tags:

C++

Visual C++