What's the canonical way to check for type in Python?

Question

What is the best way to check whether a given object is of a given type? How about checking whether the object inherits from a given type?

Let\'s say I have an objec

Answer 1

isinstance(o, str) will return True if o is an str or is of a type that inherits from str.

type(o) is str will return True if and only if o is a str. It will return False if o is of a type that inherits from str.