From Apache Commons Lang:
// returns defaultValue if the string cannot be parsed.
int i = org.apache.commons.lang.math.NumberUtils.toInt(s, defaultValue);
From Google Guava:
// returns null if the string cannot be parsed.
Integer i = com.google.common.primitives.Ints.tryParse(s);
There is no need to write your own methods to parse numbers without throwing exceptions.