Types and Values¶

Date published: 2018-02-14

Category: Python

Subcategory: Beginner Concepts

Tags: lists, tuples, dictionaries

Value¶

A value is an assignment your program works with such as a letter or number. Examples include:

• 5
• groceries
• 3.14

Type¶

Each value belongs to a specific type.

In Python, we can check for the type of a value using a built-in function - meaning it's already available to you in the Python programming language - called type().

In [1]:

type(5)

type(5)

Out[1]:

int

The type of the value 4 is int - referred to out loud as an integer.

Numeric types and examples¶

type name	example
int	5
float	3.14

In [2]:

type(5)

type(5)

Out[2]:

int

In [3]:

type(3.14)

type(3.14)

Out[3]:

float

Sequence types and examples¶

type name	example
str	"groceries"
list	[0, 1, 2, 3]
tuple	("pi", 3.14)

In [4]:

type("groceries")

type("groceries")

Out[4]:

str

str is referred to out loud as a string.

In [5]:

type([0, 1, 2, 3])

type([0, 1, 2, 3])

Out[5]:

list

In [6]:

type(("pi", 3.14))

type(("pi", 3.14))

Out[6]:

tuple

Mapping type and example¶

type name	example
dict	{"joe": [6.8, 7.2], "matt": [8.1, 7.9]

In [7]:

type({"joe": [6.8, 7.2], "matt": [8.1, 7.9]})

type({"joe": [6.8, 7.2], "matt": [8.1, 7.9]})

Out[7]:

dict

dict is referred to out loud as a dictionary or hash map - a consistent term used to refer to this structure in other programming languages.

Learn More¶

The above types are not completely comprehensive, but are the most common ones I utilize. You can learn more about Python's built-in types on Python's official documentation page.

If you utilize inheritance, you may want to consider isinstance() rather than type(). The differences are explained in detail in this great StackOverflow post.