WhozCraig's approach is much nicer and I wanted to expand on it using the approach that the C++ FAQ uses which is as follows:
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
#include <string>
#include <stdexcept>
class BadConversion : public std::runtime_error {
public:
BadConversion(std::string const& s)
: std::runtime_error(s)
{ }
};
inline int convertToInt(std::string const& s,
bool failIfLeftoverChars = true)
{
std::istringstream i(s);
int x;
char c;
if (!(i >> x) || (failIfLeftoverChars && i.get(c)))
throw BadConversion("convertToInt(\"" + s + "\")");
return x;
}
int main()
{
std::cout << convertToInt( "100" ) << std::endl ;
std::cout << convertToInt( "-100" ) << std::endl ;
std::cout << convertToInt( " -100" ) << std::endl ;
std::cout << convertToInt( " -100 ", false ) << std::endl ;
// The next two will fail
std::cout << convertToInt( " -100 ", true ) << std::endl ;
std::cout << convertToInt( "H" ) << std::endl ;
}
This is robust and will know if the conversion fails, you also can optionally choose to fail on left over characters.