isinstance(): Is a value an instance of some class or type?

Use this predicate to test whether some instance I is an instance of some class C (or an instance of any ancestor class from which C inherits). The general form:

isinstance(I, C)

The second argument may be a class name, a type object, or a tuple of class names and type objects. If a tuple, the function will test the instance against each of the class names or type objects.

>>> class C1:
...     pass
... 
>>> class C2(C1):
...     pass
... 
>>> c2=C2()
>>> isinstance(c2,C2)
True
>>> isinstance(c2,C1)
True
>>> isinstance(c2,int)
False
>>> isinstance(1,type(55))
True
>>> isinstance(1, (int, float, long))
True
>>> isinstance('Ni', (int, float, long))
False

A most useful built-in Python class is basestring, which is the ancestor class of both str and unicode types. It is intended for cases where you want to test whether something is a string but you don't care whether it is str or unicode.

>>> isinstance(42, str)
False
>>> isinstance('x', str)
True
>>> isinstance(u'x', str)
False
>>> isinstance('x', basestring)
True
>>> isinstance(u'x', basestring)
True