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This is a usual question in python forums. How (the hell!) do I check my variable’s type?

I am NOT a python-pro, but I have to deal with this language very often, as CDS Invenio is coded using python. Well, I was changing a function and wanted to check the type of a variable…

First of all, I thought of a quick (and really dirty) fix: I thought len(myvariablename) would return 1 if variable was not array and a higher value in other cases. But it does not behave like that. Lets see an example:

>>> myvar = "hello"
>>> len(myvar) 
4
>>> myvar2 = ["hello","world"]
>>> len(myvar2)
2

Then I realised there is a simple (and cleaner) way of doing what I wanted:

>>> type(myvar2)
<type 'list'>
>>> type(myvar2)
<type 'str'>

Lets imagine you want to make a conditional statement taking into account the type of a variable. Here is how you do it:

if type(myvar).__name__ == 'str':
    print "myvar is a string!"
elif type(myvar).__name__ == 'list':
    print "myvar is a list!"

Hope it helps someone! If you want to learn more, check this link

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