Fastest way to check if string contains only digits in C#

bool IsDigitsOnly(string str)
{
    foreach (char c in str)
    {
        if (c < '0' || c > '9')
            return false;
    }

    return true;
}

Will probably be the fastest way to do it.


You could do this simply using LINQ:

return str.All(char.IsDigit);

  1. .All returns true for empty strings and throws an exception for null strings.
  2. char.IsDigit is true for all Unicode digit characters.

Here's some benchmarks based on 1000000 parses of the same string:

Updated for release stats:

IsDigitsOnly: 384588
TryParse:     639583
Regex:        1329571

Here's the code, looks like IsDigitsOnly is faster:

class Program
{
    private static Regex regex = new Regex("^[0-9]+$", RegexOptions.Compiled);

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Stopwatch watch = new Stopwatch();
        string test = int.MaxValue.ToString();
        int value;

        watch.Start();
        for(int i=0; i< 1000000; i++)
        {
            int.TryParse(test, out value);
        }
        watch.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine("TryParse: "+watch.ElapsedTicks);

        watch.Reset();
        watch.Start();
        for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
        {
            IsDigitsOnly(test);
        }
        watch.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine("IsDigitsOnly: " + watch.ElapsedTicks);

        watch.Reset();
        watch.Start();
        for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++)
        {
            regex.IsMatch(test);
        }
        watch.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine("Regex: " + watch.ElapsedTicks);

        Console.ReadLine();
    }

    static bool IsDigitsOnly(string str)
    {
        foreach (char c in str)
        {
            if (c < '0' || c > '9')
                return false;
        }

        return true;
    }
}

Of course it's worth noting that TryParse does allow leading/trailing whitespace as well as culture specific symbols. It's also limited on length of string.