3.6 types -- Names for built-in types

This module defines names for some object types that are used by the standard Python interpreter, but not for the types defined by various extension modules. Also, it does not include some of the types that arise during processing such the listiterator type. It is safe to use "from types import *" -- the module does not export any names besides the ones listed here. New names exported by future versions of this module will all end in "Type".

Typical use is for functions that do different things depending on their argument types, like the following:

from types import *
def delete(mylist, item):
    if type(item) is IntType:
       del mylist[item]
    else:
       mylist.remove(item)

Starting in Python 2.2, built-in factory functions such as int() and str() are also names for the corresponding types. This is now the preferred way to access the type instead of using the types module. Accordingly, the example above should be written as follows:

def delete(mylist, item):
    if isinstance(item, int):
       del mylist[item]
    else:
       mylist.remove(item)

The module defines the following names:

NoneType

The type of None.

TypeType

The type of type objects (such as returned by type()).

BooleanType

The type of the bool values True and False; this is an alias of the built-in bool() function. New in version 2.3.

IntType

The type of integers (e.g. 1).

LongType

The type of long integers (e.g. 1L).

FloatType

The type of floating point numbers (e.g. 1.0).

ComplexType

The type of complex numbers (e.g. 1.0j). This is not defined if Python was built without complex number support.

StringType

The type of character strings (e.g. 'Spam').

UnicodeType

The type of Unicode character strings (e.g. u'Spam'). This is not defined if Python was built without Unicode support.

TupleType

The type of tuples (e.g. (1, 2, 3, 'Spam')).

ListType

The type of lists (e.g. [0, 1, 2, 3]).

DictType

The type of dictionaries (e.g. {'Bacon': 1, 'Ham': 0}).

DictionaryType

An alternate name for DictType.

FunctionType

The type of user-defined functions and lambdas.

LambdaType

An alternate name for FunctionType.

GeneratorType

The type of generator-iterator objects, produced by calling a generator function. New in version 2.2.

CodeType

The type for code objects such as returned by compile().

ClassType

The type of user-defined classes.

InstanceType

The type of instances of user-defined classes.

MethodType

The type of methods of user-defined class instances.

UnboundMethodType

An alternate name for MethodType.

BuiltinFunctionType

The type of built-in functions like len() or sys.exit().

BuiltinMethodType

An alternate name for BuiltinFunction.

ModuleType

The type of modules.

FileType

The type of open file objects such as sys.stdout.

XRangeType

The type of range objects returned by xrange().

SliceType

The type of objects returned by slice().

EllipsisType

The type of Ellipsis.

TracebackType

The type of traceback objects such as found in sys.exc_traceback.

FrameType

The type of frame objects such as found in tb.tb_frame if tb is a traceback object.

BufferType

The type of buffer objects created by the buffer() function.

StringTypes

A sequence containing StringType and UnicodeType used to facilitate easier checking for any string object. Using this is more portable than using a sequence of the two string types constructed elsewhere since it only contains UnicodeType if it has been built in the running version of Python. For example: isinstance(s, types.StringTypes). New in version 2.2.

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Release 2.4, documentation updated on 29 November 2004.