Checking whether a variable is an integer or not [duplicate]

Answer 1

All proposed answers so far seem to miss the fact that a double (floats in python are actually doubles) can also be an integer (if it has nothing after the decimal point). I use the built-in is_integer() method on doubles to check this.

Example (to do something every xth time in a for loop):

for index in range(y): 
    # do something
    if (index/x.).is_integer():
        # do something special

Edit:

You can always convert to a float before calling this method. The three possibilities:

>>> float(5).is_integer()
True
>>> float(5.1).is_integer()
False
>>> float(5.0).is_integer()
True

Otherwise, you could check if it is an int first like Agostino said:

def is_int(val):
    if type(val) == int:
        return True
    else:
        if val.is_integer():
            return True
        else:
            return False