Python isnumeric function works only on unicode

Question

I'm trying to check if a string is numeric or not, using the isnumeric function, but the results are not as expected. The function works only if it's a unicode string.

>>> a=u'1'
>>> a.isnumeric()
True
>>> a='1'
>>> a.isnumeric()
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'isnumeric'

isnumeric works only if its unicode. Any reason why?

Answer 1

Just different name.

'1'.isdigit() True

Answer 2

Often you will want to check if a string in Python is a number. This happens all the time, for example with user input, fetching data from a database (which may return a string), or reading a file containing numbers. Depending on what type of number you are expecting, you can use several methods. Such as parsing the string, using regex, or simply attempting to cast (convert) it to a number and see what happens. Often you will also encounter non-ASCII numbers, encoded in Unicode. These may or may not be numbers. For example ๒, which is 2 in Thai. However © is simply the copyright symbol, and is obviously not a number.

link : http://pythoncentral.io/how-to-check-if-a-string-is-a-number-in-python-including-unicode/