["python","string","type-conversion"]
Checking if a string can be converted to float in Python

I've got some Python code that runs through a list of strings and converts them to integers or floating point numbers if possible. Doing this for integers is pretty easy if element.isdigit(): newelement = int(element) Floating point numbers are more difficult. Right now I'm using partition('.') to split the string and checking to make sure that one or both sides are digits. partition = element.partition('.') if (partition[0].isdigit() and partition[1] == '.' and partition[2].isdigit()) or (partition[0] == '' and partition[1] == '.' and partition[2].isdigit()) or (partition[0].isdigit() and partition[1] == '.' and partition[2] == ''): newelement = float(element) This works, but obviously the if statement for that is a bit of a bear. The other solution I considered is to just wrap the conversion in a try/catch block and see if it succeeds, as described in this question. Anyone have any other ideas? Opinions on the relative merits of the partition and try/catch approaches?
I would just use.. try: float(element) except ValueError: print("Not a float") ..it's simple, and it works. Note that it will still throw OverflowError if element is e.g. 1<<1024. Another option would be a regular expression: import re if re.match(r'^-?\d+(?:\.\d+)$', element) is None: print("Not float")