Ah, thanks, good point.  Basically, I was mostly wondering
if I had just missed some obvious helper function somewhere,
but it sounds like not.

        -glenn

Bradly wrote:
I would rescue only the TypeError. Rescueing all exceptions is asking for a hard to track down bug down the road.

-Brad



On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 11:35 AM, Glenn Little <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

    I'm looking for a simple way to check if a string really represents
    a number in ruby/rails.  I figured there would be a String.is_numeric?
    but haven't found anything.

    I've seen suggestions for roll-your-own functions the best of which
    appears to be something like (verbosely):

     def represents_number?(s)
      begin
        if Float(s)
          return true
        else
          return false
        end
      rescue
        return false
      end
     end

    This relies on the fact that Float() throws an exception if it
    gets a string that it can't convert.

    The issue I have with this is that it feels a little hinky in
    that it's relying on Float throwing an exception.  Maybe that's
    okay, but it feels just a shade side-effecty.

    The other option is to craft a regexp, which would be tough
    if I *really* wanted to be thorough.

    Am I missing any simpler options?

    Thanks...

           -glenn

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