How to identify numpy types in python?

Question

How can one reliably determine if an object has a numpy type?

I realize that this question goes against the philosophy of duck typing, but idea is to make sure a fun

Answer 1

That actually depends on what you're looking for.

• If you want to test whether a sequence is actually a ndarray, a isinstance(..., np.ndarray) is probably the easiest. Make sure you don't reload numpy in the background as the module may be different, but otherwise, you should be OK. MaskedArrays, matrix, recarray are all subclasses of ndarray, so you should be set.
• If you want to test whether a scalar is a numpy scalar, things get a bit more complicated. You could check whether it has a shape and a dtype attribute. You can compare its dtype to the basic dtypes, whose list you can find in np.core.numerictypes.genericTypeRank. Note that the elements of this list are strings, so you'd have to do a tested.dtype is np.dtype(an_element_of_the_list)...