argument type

[Donn Cave]

Quoth "It's me" <itsme at yahoo.com>:
| A newbie question.
|
| How can I tell from within a function whether a particular argument is a
| sigular type, or a complex type?
|
| For instance, in:
|
|     def abc(arg1)
|
| How do I know if arg1 is a single type (like a number), or a list?
|
| In C++, you would do it with function overloading.  If arg1 is always simple
| type, I wouldn't care what it is.  But what if I *do* need to know whether
| arg1 is a list or not?
|
| I hate to have to have 2 functions: 1 for simple types, and one for list
| types and then do something like:
|
|     abc_simple(1.0)
|     abc_list([1.0,2.0])
|
| Any help would be greatly appreciated.

How about abc([1.0])?  That's easy, and it's a lot cleaner than
mucking up your API with functions whose parameters have multiple
possible interpretations.  C++ doesn't always point the way to
great programming models.

	Donn Cave, donn at drizzle.com