How to access the NoneType type?

Question

For example looking at the type of None, we can see that it has NoneType:

>>> type(None)
NoneType

However a NameErr

Answer 1

Well, in Python 2, you can import it from the types module:

from types import NoneType

but it's not actually implemented there or anything. types.py just does NoneType = type(None). You might as well just use type(None) directly.

In Python 3, the types.NoneType name is gone. Just use type(None).

---

If type(None) shows NoneType for you, rather than something like <class 'NoneType'>, you're probably on some nonstandard interpreter setup, such as IPython. It'd usually show up as something like <class 'NoneType'>, making it clearer that you can't just type NoneType and get the type.

Answer 2

As suggested by @dawg in the comments, you can do

if (type(some_object).__name__ == "NoneType"):
  # Do some
  pass

You can also do

NoneType = type(None)    
isinstance(some_object, NoneType)