C# - convert string to int and test success

Question

How can you check whether a string is convertible to an int?

Lets say we have data like "House", "50", "Dog", "45.99", I want to know whether I should just use the string or use the parsed int value instead.

In Javascript we had this parseInt() function, if the string couldn't be parsed, it would get back NaN.

Answer 1

Int32.TryParse(String, Int32) - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f02979c7.aspx

  bool result = Int32.TryParse(value, out number);
  if (result)
  {
     Console.WriteLine("Converted '{0}' to {1}.", value, number);         
  }

Answer 2

Int.TryParse

Answer 3

Could you not make it a little more elegant by running the tryparse right into the if?

Like so:

if (Int32.TryParse(value, out number))     
  Console.WriteLine("Converted '{0}' to {1}.", value, number);