Detect whether a Python string is a number or a letter

How can I detect either numbers or letters in a string? I am aware you use the ASCII codes, but what functions take advantage of them?

Answer

You may use str.isdigit() and str.isalpha() to check whether given string is positive integer and alphabet respectively.

Sample Results:

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

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

>>> '1'.isalpha()
False

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

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

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.