Python: Convert a string to an integer

Question

Does anybody have a quickie for converting an unsafe string to an int?

The string typically comes back as: \'234\\r\\n\' or something like

Answer 1

int('243\r\n'.strip())

But that won't help you, if something else than a number is passed. Always put try, except and catch ValueError.

Anyway, this also works: int('243\n\r '), so maybe you don't even need strip.

EDIT:

Why don't you just write your own function, that will catch the exception and return a sane default and put into some utils module?