user
Task

Create a boolean function which takes in a string and tells whether it is a numeric string (floating point and negative numbers included) in the syntax the language uses for numeric literals or numbers converted from strings.

Other tasks related to string operations:

Metrics

* Array length
* String length
* Copy a string
* Empty string  (assignment)

Counting

* Word frequency
* Letter frequency
* Jewels and stones
* I before E except after C
* Bioinformatics/base count
* Count occurrences of a substring
* Count how many vowels and consonants occur in a string

Remove/replace

* XXXX redacted
* Conjugate a Latin verb
* Remove vowels from a string
* String interpolation (included)
* Strip block comments
* Strip comments from a string
* Strip a set of characters from a string
* Strip whitespace from a string -- top and tail
* Strip control codes and extended characters from a string

Anagrams/Derangements/shuffling

* Word wheel
* ABC problem
* Sattolo cycle
* Knuth shuffle
* Ordered words
* Superpermutation minimisation
* Textonyms (using a phone text pad)
* Anagrams
* Anagrams/Deranged anagrams
* Permutations/Derangements

Find/Search/Determine

* ABC words
* Odd words
* Word ladder
* Semordnilap
* Word search
* Wordiff  (game)
* String matching
* Tea cup rim text
* Alternade words
* Changeable words
* State name puzzle
* String comparison
* Unique characters
* Unique characters in each string
* Extract file extension
* Levenshtein distance
* Palindrome detection
* Common list elements
* Longest common suffix
* Longest common prefix
* Compare a list of strings
* Longest common substring
* Find common directory path
* Words from neighbour ones
* Change e letters to i in words
* Non-continuous subsequences
* Longest common subsequence
* Longest palindromic substrings
* Longest increasing subsequence
* Words containing "the" substring
* Sum of the digits of n is substring of n
* Determine if a string is numeric
* Determine if a string is collapsible
* Determine if a string is squeezable
* Determine if a string has all unique characters
* Determine if a string has all the same characters
* Longest substrings without repeating characters
* Find words which contains all the vowels
* Find words which contain the most consonants
* Find words which contains more than 3 vowels
* Find words whose first and last three letters are equal
* Find words with alternating vowels and consonants

Formatting

* Substring
* Rep-string
* Word wrap
* String case
* Align columns
* Literals/String
* Repeat a string
* Brace expansion
* Brace expansion using ranges
* Reverse a string
* Phrase reversals
* Comma quibbling
* Special characters
* String concatenation
* Substring/Top and tail
* Commatizing numbers
* Reverse words in a string
* Suffixation of decimal numbers
* Long literals, with continuations
* Numerical and alphabetical suffixes
* Abbreviations, easy
* Abbreviations, simple
* Abbreviations, automatic

Song lyrics/poems/Mad Libs/phrases

* Mad Libs
* Magic 8-ball
* 99 bottles of beer
* The Name Game (a song)
* The Old lady swallowed a fly
* The Twelve Days of Christmas

Tokenize

* Text between
* Tokenize a string
* Word break problem
* Tokenize a string with escaping
* Split a character string based on change of character

Sequences

* Show ASCII table
* De Bruijn sequences
* Summarize and say sequence
* Generate lower case ASCII alphabet
assistant
(formerly Perl 6)

**Works with**: Rakudo version 2017.11

Raku tries very hard to DWIM (do what I mean). As part of that, numeric strings are by default stored as allomorphic types which can be used as numbers or strings without any conversion. If we truly want to operate on strings, we have to explicitly coerce the allomorphs to strings. A subtlety that may not be immediately apparent, whitespace, empty strings and null strings may be treated as (False) boolean values in Raku, however booleans are allomorphic to numeric, so empty strings will coerce to a numeric value (0), and return as numeric unless specifically checked for. Interestingly, the actual strings 'True' and 'False' **don't** evaluate as numeric. (because there are no String | Boolean allomorphs.)

Note: These routines are usable for most cases but won't detect unicode non-digit numeric forms; E.G. vulgar fractions, Roman numerals, circled numbers, etc. If it is necessary to detect those as numeric, a full fledged grammar may be necessary.

```
sub is-number-w-ws( Str $term --> Bool ) { # treat Falsey strings as numeric
    $term.Numeric !~~ Failure;
}

sub is-number-wo-ws( Str $term --> Bool ) { # treat Falsey strings as non-numeric
    ?($term ~~ / \S /) && $term.Numeric !~~ Failure;
}

say "               Coerce     Don't coerce";
say '    String   whitespace    whitespace';
printf "%10s  %8s  %11s\n",
"<$_>", .&is-number-w-ws, .&is-number-wo-ws for
(|<1 1.2 1.2.3 -6 1/2 12e B17 1.3e+12 1.3e12 -2.6e-3 zero 0x 0xA10 0b1001 0o16 
0o18 2+5i True False Inf NaN 0x10.50 0b102 0o_5_3 ௫௯>, '  12  ', '1 1 1', '', ' ' ).map: *.Str;
```

```
               Coerce     Don't coerce
    String   whitespace    whitespace
       <1>      True         True
     <1.2>      True         True
   <1.2.3>     False        False
      <-6>      True         True
     <1/2>      True         True
     <12e>     False        False
     <B17>     False        False
 <1.3e+12>      True         True
  <1.3e12>      True         True
 <-2.6e-3>      True         True
    <zero>     False        False
      <0x>     False        False
   <0xA10>      True         True
  <0b1001>      True         True
    <0o16>      True         True
    <0o18>     False        False
    <2+5i>      True         True
    <True>     False        False
   <False>     False        False
     <Inf>      True         True
     <NaN>      True         True
 <0x10.50>      True         True
   <0b102>     False        False
  <0o_5_3>      True         True
      <௫௯>      True         True
 <   12  >      True         True
   <1 1 1>     False        False
        <>      True        False
       < >      True        False
```