type

Tells you the type of a value.

Synopsis

type(value)

Description

Use type when a value does not behave the way you expect. It is a debugging tool.

Parameters

Return value

The type, shown as <class 'int'>, <class 'str'> and so on.

Example

print(type(42))
print(type("42"))
print(type(4.2))
print(type(True))
print(type([1, 2]))

It prints:

<class 'int'>
<class 'str'>
<class 'float'>
<class 'bool'>
<class 'list'>

Common mistake

x = input("Number: ")
print(type(x))

It prints:

Number: 5
<class 'str'>

Not an error, but a surprise: the user typed a number, yet x is a string. input always returns str.

See also

input, int, str

type in the Python documentation