Determine the type of an object?

Question

Is there a simple way to determine if a variable is a list, dictionary, or something else? I am getting an object back that may be either type and I need to be able to tell

Answer 1

For the sake of completeness, isinstance will not work for type checking of a subtype that is not an instance. While that makes perfect sense, none of the answers (including the accepted one) covers it. Use issubclass for that.

>>> class a(list):
...   pass
... 
>>> isinstance(a, list)
False
>>> issubclass(a, list)
True