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

[josh logan]

But this changes with Python 3, right?

On Aug 30, 7:15 am, Ken Starks <stra... at lampsacos.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> George Sakkis wrote:
> > 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
>
> For a bit more explanation see, for example,
>
> http://evanjones.ca/python-utf8.html
>
> (Quote)
> Working With Unicode Strings
>
> Thankfully, everything in Python is supposed to treat Unicode strings
> identically to byte strings. However, you need to be careful in your own
> code when testing to see if an object is a string. Do not do this:
>
> if isinstance( s, str ): # BAD: Not true for Unicode strings!
>
> Instead, use the generic string base class, basestring:
>
> if isinstance( s, basestring ): # True for both Unicode and byte strings