How to compare type of an object in Python?

Question

Basically I want to do this:

obj = \'str\'
type ( obj ) == string

I tried:

type ( obj ) == type ( string )

<

Answer 1

Use isinstance(object, type). As above this is easy to use if you know the correct type, e.g.,

isinstance('dog', str) ## gives bool True

But for more esoteric objects, this can be difficult to use. For example:

import numpy as np 
a = np.array([1,2,3]) 
isinstance(a,np.array) ## breaks

but you can do this trick:

y = type(np.array([1]))
isinstance(a,y) ## gives bool True 

So I recommend instantiating a variable (y in this case) with a type of the object you want to check (e.g., type(np.array())), then using isinstance.