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

Question

I\'ve had quite a bit of trouble trying to write a function that checks if a string is a number. For a game I am writing I just need to check if a line from the file I am r

Answer 1

Few months ago, I implemented a way to determine if any string is integer, hexadecimal or double.

enum{
        STRING_IS_INVALID_NUMBER=0,
        STRING_IS_HEXA,
        STRING_IS_INT,
        STRING_IS_DOUBLE
};

bool isDigit(char c){
    return (('0' <= c) && (c<='9'));
}

bool isHexaDigit(char c){
    return ((('0' <= c) && (c<='9')) || ((tolower(c)<='a')&&(tolower(c)<='f')));
}


char *ADVANCE_DIGITS(char *aux_p){

    while(CString::isDigit(*aux_p)) aux_p++;
    return aux_p;
}

char *ADVANCE_HEXADIGITS(char *aux_p){

    while(CString::isHexaDigit(*aux_p)) aux_p++;
    return aux_p;
}


int isNumber(const string & test_str_number){
    bool isHexa=false;
    char *str = (char *)test_str_number.c_str();

    switch(*str){
    case '-': str++; // is negative number ...
               break;
    case '0': 
              if(tolower(*str+1)=='x')  {
                  isHexa = true;
                  str+=2;
              }
              break;
    default:
            break;
    };

    char *start_str = str; // saves start position...
    if(isHexa) { // candidate to hexa ...
        str = ADVANCE_HEXADIGITS(str);
        if(str == start_str)
            return STRING_IS_INVALID_NUMBER;

        if(*str == ' ' || *str == 0) 
            return STRING_IS_HEXA;

    }else{ // test if integer or float
        str = ADVANCE_DIGITS(str);
        if(*str=='.') { // is candidate to double
            str++;
            str = ADVANCE_DIGITS(str);
            if(*str == ' ' || *str == 0)
                return STRING_IS_DOUBLE;

            return STRING_IS_INVALID_NUMBER;
        }

        if(*str == ' ' || *str == 0)
            return STRING_IS_INT;

    }

    return STRING_IS_INVALID_NUMBER;


}

Then in your program you can easily convert the number in function its type if you do the following,

string val; // the string to check if number...

switch(isNumber(val)){
   case STRING_IS_HEXA: 
   // use strtol(val.c_str(), NULL, 16); to convert it into conventional hexadecimal
   break;
   case STRING_IS_INT: 
   // use (int)strtol(val.c_str(), NULL, 10); to convert it into conventional integer
   break;
   case STRING_IS_DOUBLE:
   // use atof(val.c_str()); to convert it into conventional float/double
   break;
}

You can realise that the function will return a 0 if the number wasn't detected. The 0 it can be treated as false (like boolean).