Pythonic way to determine if a string is a number

[Scott David Daniels]

python at bdurham.com wrote:
> Thanks for everyone's feedback....
> def isnumber( input ):
>     try:
>         num = float( input )
>         return True
> 
>     except ValueError:
>         return False

Pretty good, but what about 0x23?

     def isnumber( input ):
         try:
             num = float(input)
             return True
         except ValueError:
             try:
                 num = int(input, 0) # Convert to int, base spec in arg
                 return True
             except ValueError:
                 return False


--Scott David Daniels
Scott.Daniels at Acm.Org