How can I tell if a python variable is a string or a list?

Question

I have a routine that takes a list of strings as a parameter, but I\'d like to support passing in a single string and converting it to a list of one string. For example:

Answer 1

Varargs was confusing for me, so I tested it out in Python to clear it up for myself.

First of all the PEP for varargs is here.

Here is sample program, based on the two answers from Dave and David Berger, followed by the output, just for clarification.

def func( *files ):
    print files
    for f in files:
        print( f )

if __name__ == '__main__':
    func( *['file1','file2','file3'] ) #Is treated like func('file1','file2','file3')
    func( 'onestring' )
    func( 'thing1','thing2','thing3' )
    func( ['stuff1','stuff2','stuff3'] )

And the resulting output;

('file1', 'file2', 'file3')
file1
file2
file3
('onestring',)
onestring
('thing1', 'thing2', 'thing3')
thing1
thing2
thing3
(['stuff1', 'stuff2', 'stuff3'],)
['stuff1', 'stuff2', 'stuff3']

Hope this is helpful to somebody else.