<p>I normally use the following idiom to check if a String can be converted to an integer.</p>

<pre><code>public boolean isInteger( String input ) {
    try {
        Integer.parseInt( input );
        return true;
    }
    catch( Exception e ) {
        return false;
    }
}
</code></pre>

<p>Is it just me, or does this seem a bit hackish?  What's a better way?</p>

<hr>

<p>See my answer (with benchmarks, based on the <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/237321/1288">earlier answer</a> by <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/users/28278/codingwithspike">CodingWithSpike</a>) to see why I've reversed my position and accepted <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/237204/1288">Jonas Klemming's answer</a> to this problem.  I think this original code will be used by most people because it's quicker to implement, and more maintainable, but it's orders of magnitude slower when non-integer data is provided.</p>

How about:
```
```
return Pattern.matches("-?\\d+", input);
```
```