Determine the type of an object?

Question

Is there a simple way to determine if a variable is a list, dictionary, or something else? I am getting an object back that may be either type and I need to be able to tell

Answer 1

On instances of object you also have the:

__class__

attribute. Here is a sample taken from Python 3.3 console

>>> str = "str"
>>> str.__class__

>>> i = 2
>>> i.__class__

>>> class Test():
...     pass
...
>>> a = Test()
>>> a.__class__

Beware that in python 3.x and in New-Style classes (aviable optionally from Python 2.6) class and type have been merged and this can sometime lead to unexpected results. Mainly for this reason my favorite way of testing types/classes is to the isinstance built in function.