strings

[Peter Otten]

Scribe wrote:

> Hi
> Somewhat new to Python and would appreciated some help in selecting the
> best builtins to achieve what I want.
> I pass a string to a function, it is either
> empty
> spaces
> alpha and digits
> or
> a decimal ie. 5,789.88
> if it is a decimal I want to return the number without the commer any
> others return 0.
> Should be simple or maybe I am.
> Any help apreciated.

import locale

locale.setlocale(locale.LC_ALL, ("en", None))

def strtofloat(s):
    try:
        return locale.atof(s)
        #return float(s.replace(",", ""))
    except ValueError:
        return 0.0


for s in "a 0 12 123.4 12,345.67 12,24a".split():
    print s, "->", strtofloat(s)

Output:
a -> 0.0
0 -> 0.0
12 -> 12.0
123.4 -> 123.4
12,345.67 -> 12345.67
12,24a -> 0.0

Peter