How do you check for the type of variable in Elixir

Question

In Elixir how do you check for type such as in Python:

>>> a = \"test\"
>>> type(a)

>>> b =10
>>> type(b         


        

Answer 1

I'll just leave this here for the sake of somebody hopefully figuring out an actually sane version. At the moment there are no good answers to this coming up on google...

defmodule Util do
    def typeof(self) do
        cond do
            is_float(self)    -> "float"
            is_number(self)   -> "number"
            is_atom(self)     -> "atom"
            is_boolean(self)  -> "boolean"
            is_binary(self)   -> "binary"
            is_function(self) -> "function"
            is_list(self)     -> "list"
            is_tuple(self)    -> "tuple"
            true              -> "idunno"
        end    
    end
end

For the sake of completeness, test cases:

cases = [
    1.337, 
    1337, 
    :'1337', 
    true, 
    <<1, 3, 3, 7>>, 
    (fn(x) -> x end), 
    {1, 3, 3, 7}
]

Enum.each cases, fn(case) -> 
    IO.puts (inspect case) <> " is a " <> (Util.typeof case)
end

Here's a solution with protocols; I am not sure if they are faster(I sure hope they are not doing a loop over all types), but it is pretty ugly(and fragile; if they add or remove a basic type or rename, it will break it).

defprotocol Typeable, do: def typeof(self)
defimpl Typeable, for: Atom, do: def typeof(_), do: "Atom"
defimpl Typeable, for: BitString, do: def typeof(_), do: "BitString"
defimpl Typeable, for: Float, do: def typeof(_), do: "Float"
defimpl Typeable, for: Function, do: def typeof(_), do: "Function"
defimpl Typeable, for: Integer, do: def typeof(_), do: "Integer"
defimpl Typeable, for: List, do: def typeof(_), do: "List"
defimpl Typeable, for: Map, do: def typeof(_), do: "Map"
defimpl Typeable, for: PID, do: def typeof(_), do: "PID"
defimpl Typeable, for: Port, do: def typeof(_), do: "Port"
defimpl Typeable, for: Reference, do: def typeof(_), do: "Reference"
defimpl Typeable, for: Tuple, do: def typeof(_), do: "Tuple"

IO.puts Typeable.typeof "Hi"
IO.puts Typeable.typeof :ok