[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I am very new to all this and need to know how to check > a variable to see if it is a number or not.
assuming that "variable" means "string object" and "number" means "integer", you can use the isdigit predicate: if var.isdigit(): print "all characters in", var, "are digits" if you want to check for anything that can be converted to a float, the best way is to do the conversion and trap any ValueError that may occur: try: value = float(var) except ValueError: print "not a valid float" if you want an integer instead, replace "float" with "int". if you had something else in mind, let us know. > Also can anyone recommend a reference book apart from dive into python > preferably a reference with good examples of how to impliment code. you can find an extensive list of available books here: http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonBooks some on-line code collections: http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Python/Cookbook/ http://effbot.org/zone/librarybook-index.htm and don't forget the core references: http://docs.python.org/lib/ http://docs.python.org/ref/ </F> -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list