How to get the type of an object?

[Licheng Fang]

I wrote a function with a list as its parameter. And the function has
to perform different operations based on the datatypes of the elements.
How can I decide whether an object is, say, a list or a string?

Thanks.

[smichr]

You can use the type() function:

###

s='hello'
type(s) <type 'str'> type(s)==str True n=1
type(n) <type 'int'> type(n)==int

True
###

You can do the same with list, too. So you could write,

if type(x)==list:
#do list action

/c

[Dennis Benzinger]

Licheng Fang schrieb:

I wrote a function with a list as its parameter. And the function has
to perform different operations based on the datatypes of the elements.
How can I decide whether an object is, say, a list or a string?

Thanks.

To check if an object is of a particular type use isinstance(), to get
the type of an object use type(). You can read more about this two
function in the built-in functions documentation
<http://www.python.org/doc/2.4.2/lib/built-in-funcs.html>. The types
module <http://www.python.org/doc/2.4.2/lib/module-types.html> may also
help you.

Small example:

a_list = [1, "two", [3], (4,), {5: 5}]
for item in a_list:
if isinstance(item, list):
print "It's a list"
else:
print type(item)
Bye,
Dennis

[Licheng Fang]

That helps. Thank you guys.