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

You could just:

def to_int(unsafe_string):
    return int(unsafe_string.strip())

But it will throw a ValueError if the stripped unsafe_string is not a valid number. You can of course catch the ValueError and do what you like with it.