checking one's type

[Ben Artin]

In article <mailman.2314.1167986448.32031.python-list at python.org>,
 belinda thom <bthom at cs.hmc.edu> wrote:

> I've been using the following hack to determine if a type is  
> acceptable and I suspect there is a better way to do it:
> 
> e.g.
> 
> if type(s) == type("") :
>     print "okay, i'm happy you're a string"
> 
> If anyone knows a better way, I'm all ears.

If you want to know whether something is specifically a string, but not a 
Unicode string, then you want isinstance(foo, str). If you want to check whether 
something is a general string (including Unicode strings), you want 
isinstance(foo, basestring).

hth

Ben

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