A way of checking if a string contains a number

[Hamish]

Hey

I'm new to python, but I have used a fair bit of C and Perl

I found Perls regex's to be very easy to use however I don't find
Pythons regexes as good.

All I am trying to do is detect if there is a number in a string.

I am reading the string from an excel spread sheet using the xlrd
module

then I would like to test if this string has a number in it

ie.
import xlrd
import re

doesHaveNumber = re.compile('[0-9]')
string1 = ABC 11

regularExpressionCheck = doesHaveNumber.search(string1)

This will get the right result but then I would like to use the result
in an IF statement and have not had much luck with it.

if regularExpressionCheck != "None"
print "Something"

the result is that it prints every line from the spreadsheet to output
but I only want the lines from the spreadsheet to output.

Is there a way I can drop the regular expression module and just use
built in string processing?

Why si the output from checks in teh re module either "None" or some
crazy memory address? Couldn't it be just true or false?

[Larry Bates]

Hamish wrote:

Hey

I'm new to python, but I have used a fair bit of C and Perl

I found Perls regex's to be very easy to use however I don't find
Pythons regexes as good.

All I am trying to do is detect if there is a number in a string.

I am reading the string from an excel spread sheet using the xlrd
module

then I would like to test if this string has a number in it

ie.
import xlrd
import re

doesHaveNumber = re.compile('[0-9]')
string1 = ABC 11

regularExpressionCheck = doesHaveNumber.search(string1)

This will get the right result but then I would like to use the result
in an IF statement and have not had much luck with it.

if regularExpressionCheck != "None"
print "Something"

the result is that it prints every line from the spreadsheet to output
but I only want the lines from the spreadsheet to output.

Is there a way I can drop the regular expression module and just use
built in string processing?

Why si the output from checks in teh re module either "None" or some
crazy memory address? Couldn't it be just true or false?

regularExpressionCheck won't ever contain the characters "None". The result
if doesHaveNumber.search(string1) is a match object not a string. IMHO regular
expressions are overkill for the task you describe. You may be better served to
just try to convert it to whatever number you want.

try:
value=int(string1)

except ValueError:
# do whatever you want for non integers here

else:
# do whatever you want for integers here

Or use string methods:

if string1.isdigit():
print "digits found"
else:
print "alphas found"

-Larry

[Zero Piraeus]

:

[...] IMHO regular
expressions are overkill for the task you describe. You may be better served to
just try to convert it to whatever number you want.

try:
value=int(string1)

Fails for the OP's example:

>>string1 = "ABC 11"
int(string1)

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: invalid literal for int(): ABC 11

Or use string methods:

if string1.isdigit():
print "digits found"
else:
print "alphas found"

Again ...

>>string1.isdigit()

False

If you were desperate to avoid regexes, this works:

>>max([(d in string1) for d in "0123456789"])

True

.... but it's not exactly legible.

-[]z.

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Larry Bates a écrit :

IMHO
regular expressions are overkill for the task you describe.

There are cases where regexps are the right tool, and according to the
exemple given, this may be one (now it's of course hard to tell without
seeing a decent sample of real data...).

[MRAB]

On Dec 12, 10:59 pm, "Zero Piraeus" <[e-mail]:

:

[...] IMHO regular
expressions are overkill for the task you describe. You may be better served to
just try to convert it to whatever number you want.

try:
value=int(string1)

Fails for the OP's example:

>>string1 = "ABC 11"
>>int(string1)

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ValueError: invalid literal for int(): ABC 11

Or use string methods:

if string1.isdigit():
print "digits found"
else:
print "alphas found"

Again ...

>>string1.isdigit()

False

If you were desperate to avoid regexes, this works:

>>max([(d in string1) for d in "0123456789"])

True

... but it's not exactly legible.

How about:

>>string1 = "ABC 11"
any(c.isdigit() for c in string1)

True