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

You can use type() or isinstance().

>>> type([]) is list
True

Be warned that you can clobber list or any other type by assigning a variable in the current scope of the same name.

>>> the_d = {}
>>> t = lambda x: "aight" if type(x) is dict else "NOPE"
>>> t(the_d) 'aight'
>>> dict = "dude."
>>> t(the_d) 'NOPE'

Above we see that dict gets reassigned to a string, therefore the test:

type({}) is dict

...fails.

To get around this and use type() more cautiously:

>>> import __builtin__
>>> the_d = {}
>>> type({}) is dict
True
>>> dict =""
>>> type({}) is dict
False
>>> type({}) is __builtin__.dict
True