checking if a char * is an integer

I have a line being read from the command line that contains 4 strings. The first is the command name, the second is supposed to be an integer value, the 3rd is the path to the source file, and the 4th is the path to the destination file. All of these arguments are being read in and stored in char * variables. The 2nd argument on the command line is the integer value. This is read in and stored as a char *, but is then converted into an integer by use of the atoi function. The problem is that I need to check if this argument is a valid positive integer before converting it to an actual integer. For example...

commandname 55 source destination ... "55" is valid so the command can be executed

commandname somenum source destination ... "somenum" is not a valid integer so the command can't be executed

... My question is, how can check if a char * is a positive integer before using the atoi function? I tried looking up some functions related to isalnum(), but none of those seemed to be what I was looking for.

Thanks.

strtol() can validate and convert all in one

if i was to pass the string "39num" to strtol(), would that mean that it stops on the 'n' and returns 39 as the long int? or does it stop on the 'n' and return as a failure?

possible scenarios:
39 ... valid
39num ... invalid
num39 ... invalid
num ... invalid

from reading the man page on strtol, i am figuring that after calling strtol(), if *nptr != NULL and **endptr == NULL then the long int returned is the valid number after the conversion. but if those 2 cases aren't true, then no matter what the returned long int is, the conversion was not succesful based on the string being an invalid number. is this what would be happening in the case of "39num"?


is it worth doing this the long way?
parse the string char by char until " " or NULL is found, check if each char is a digit, if all chars are digits then concatenate them into a new string and then convert that string using the atoi function

If you apply the right checks (examine the value in errno, and examine what *endptr points to), you can achieve what you want to

>is it worth doing this the long way?
Not unless you need specialized checking that the standard library doesn't offer. strtol is your best option if you want to make a conversion and have good error checking/validation as well.

If you got the second string which is to be converted in
*string you could try this:

Code:

---

#include <string.h>

char str2[] = "1234567890";

int cnt = strspn ( string, str2 );

if(cnt < strlen(string))
{
        Error()
}else
{
        Convert()
}

---

strspn returns the first character in string, which is not in str2.