Most elegant way to detect if a String is a number?

Question

Is there a better, more elegant (and/or possibly faster) way than

boolean isNumber = false;
try{
   Double.valueOf(myNumber);
   isNumber = true;
} catch (Nu         


        

Answer 1

Most of these answers are somewhat acceptable solutions. All of the regex solutions have the issue of not being correct for all cases you may care about.

If you really want to ensure that the String is a valid number, then I would use your own solution. Don't forget that, I imagine, that most of the time the String will be a valid number and won't raise an exception. So most of the time the performance will be identical to that of Double.valueOf().

I guess this really isn't an answer, except that it validates your initial instinct.

Randy