Inserting '-' character in front of all numbers in a string

[Michael Bentley]

On Mar 30, 2007, at 10:38 AM, kevinliu23 wrote:

> I want to be able to insert a '-' character in front of all numeric
> values in a string. I want to insert the '-' character to use in
> conjunction with the getopt.getopt() function.
>
> Rigt now, I'm implementing a menu system where users will be able to
> select a set of options like "2a 3ab" which corresponds to menu
> choices. However, with getopt.getopt(), it'll only return what I want
> if I input -2a -3ab as my string. I don't want the user have to insert
> a '-' character in front of all their choices, so I was thinking of
> accepting the string input first, then adding in the '-' character
> myself.
>
> So my qusetion is, how do I change:
>
> "2a 3ab" into "-2a -3ab".
>

Will the first character always be a digit?

for i in yourstring.split():
	if i[0].isdigit():
		yourstring = yourstring.replace(i, '-%s' % (i,))

Or are these hex numbers?