How to find out if a Python object is a string?

Question

How can I check if a Python object is a string (either regular or Unicode)?

Answer 1

For a nice duck-typing approach for string-likes that has the bonus of working with both Python 2.x and 3.x:

def is_string(obj):
    try:
        obj + ''
        return True
    except TypeError:
        return False

wisefish was close with the duck-typing before he switched to the isinstance approach, except that += has a different meaning for lists than + does.