Difference in python between basestring and types.StringType?

Question

What\'s the difference between:

isinstance(foo, types.StringType)

and

isinstance(foo, basestring)

?

Answer 1

For Python 2.x:

try:
    basestring        # added in Python 2.3
except NameError:
    basestring = (str, unicode)
...
if isinstance(foo, basestring):
    ...

Of course this might not work for Python 3, but I'm quite sure the 2to3 converter will take care of the topic.