How to check is something is a list or a dictionary or a string?

George Sakkis george.sakkis at gmail.com
Fri Aug 29 13:25:49 EDT 2008


On Aug 29, 12:16 pm, dudeja.ra... at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How to check if something is a list or a dictionary or just a string?
> Eg:
>
> for item in self.__libVerDict.itervalues():
>             self.cbAnalysisLibVersion(END, item)
>
> where __libVerDict is a dictionary that holds values as strings or
> lists. So now, when I iterate this dictionary I want to check whether
> the item is a list or just a string?

if isinstance(item,basestring):
   # it's a string
    ...
else: # it should be a list
   # typically you don't have to check it explicitly;
   # even if it's not a list, it will raise an exception later anyway
if you call a list-specific method


HTH,
George



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