How can I check if a string represents an int, without using try/except?

Question

Is there any way to tell whether a string represents an integer (e.g., \'3\', \'-17\' but not \'3.14\' or \'asf

Answer 1

Greg Hewgill's approach was missing a few components: the leading "^" to only match the start of the string, and compiling the re beforehand. But this approach will allow you to avoid a try: exept:

import re
INT_RE = re.compile(r"^[-]?\d+$")
def RepresentsInt(s):
    return INT_RE.match(str(s)) is not None

I would be interested why you are trying to avoid try: except?