Check if input is a list/tuple of strings or a single string

Question

I\'ve a method that I want to be able to accept either a single string (a path, but not necessarily one that exists on the machine running the code) or a list/tuple of strin

Answer 1

Type checking:

def func(arg):
    if not isinstance(arg, (list, tuple)):
        arg = [arg]
    # process

func('abc')
func(['abc', '123'])

Varargs:

def func(*arg):
    # process

func('abc')
func('abc', '123')
func(*['abc', '123'])

Answer 2

Can't you do:

(i == list (i) or i == tuple (i))

It would reply if the input is tuple or list. The only issue is that it doesn't work properly with a tuple holding only one variable.

Answer 3

As I like to keep things simple, here is the shortest form that is compatible with both 2.x and 3.x:

# trick for py2/3 compatibility
if 'basestring' not in globals():
   basestring = str

v = "xx"

if isinstance(v, basestring):
   print("is string")