Fixed possible versions. 

I’m firmly -1 on this. It’s not at all common, and would allow code to pass that I’d prefer to cause an error. For the rare case where it’s desired, it can be moved in to the client code. 

If I were doing this in client code, I’d try to convert to an int, and if an exception use the string version. It’s only a few lines of code:

    try:
        val = int(val)
    except ValueError:
        pass

(I think it’s a ValueError, but I’m on my phone and can’t easily verify.)