Data Types

Published May 6, 2021Updated May 11, 2023
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Python is a strongly typed language, in the sense that at runtime it prevents typing errors and it engages in little implicit type conversion or casting, i.e. converting one type to another without a specific call to a conversion function.

codecademy = 575
codecademy = "575 broadway"

After line 1, codecademy is an int. After line 2, codecademy is a str.

Python includes the following categories of built-in data types:

  • String type: str
  • Boolean type: bool
  • Binary types: bytes, bytearray, memoryview
  • Number types: int, float, complex
  • Sequence Types: list, range, tuple
  • Set types: set, frozenset
  • Dictionary type: dict

type()

The type() function can be used to retrieve the data type of an object:

message = "Hello, world!"
print(type(message))
# Output: <class 'str'>

isinstance()

The isinstance() function can be used to test if an object is an instance of a specified type. This will print a boolean value for each function call, indicating if the object is an instance of the given type:

word = "purple"
languages = ("Python", "JavaScript", "Go")
print(isinstance(word, str)) # Output: True
print(isinstance(languages, list)) # Output: False
print(isinstance(languages, tuple)) # Output: True

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