Python string isnumeric() - How to check if a string is numeric

The isnumeric() checks if a string is numeric in Python. For example, 3 as a string is numeric because it can be regarded as an integer.

a1 = '7'
a2 = 'xyz'
a3 = '3.14'
a4 = 'stu2345'

b1 = a1.isnumeric()
b2 = a2.isnumeric()
b3 = a3.isnumeric()
b4 = a4.isnumeric()

print(b1)  # True
print(b2)  # False
print(b3)  # False
print(b4)  # False

3.14 is not numeric by the isnumeric() though we can convert it to float or Decimal.

from decimal import Decimal

a3 = '3.14'

f = float(a3)
d = Decimal(a3)

print(f)  # 3.14
print(d)  # 3.14

A Number with hyphen or comma is not numeric

A phone number often contain hyphens but it's basically an integer. The Python isnumeric() doesn't regard it as numeric. In many countries, large numbers are written with commas placed every third digit but its expression is not numeric in the isnumeric().

a1 = '123-456-789'
a2 = '1,234,567'

b1 = a1.isnumeric()
b2 = a2.isnumeric()

print(b1)  # False
print(b2)  # False

Note that a number with commas can't be converted to an integer by int().

a = '1,234,567'

b = int(a)

# ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: '1,234,567'

The simple way to convert it to an int value is replacing commas with an empty string. But Python locale module has a method to read it as int. The locale.atoi() converts a
"numeric" string with commas to an integer.

import locale

locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, 'en_US.UTF-8')

a = '1,234,567'
b = locale.atoi(a)

print(b)  # 1234567

Before using this function, you should set the locale information as above.