isinstance¶

Description¶

Returns a Boolean stating whether the object is an instance or subclass of another object.

Syntax¶

isinstance (object, classinfo)

object: Required. An object instance.
classinfo: Required. A class, type or a tuple containing classes, types or other tuples.

Return Value¶

#TODO

Time Complexity¶

#TODO

Remarks¶

Also returns True if classinfo is a type object (new-style class) and object is an object of that type or of a (direct, indirect or virtual) subclass thereof. If object is not a class instance or an object of the given type, the function always returns false. If classinfo is neither a class object nor a type object, it may be a tuple of class or type objects, or may recursively contain other such tuples (other sequence types are not accepted). If classinfo is not a class, type, or tuple of classes, types, and such tuples, a TypeError exception is raised.

Example 1¶

>>> isinstance('foo', basestring)
True
>>> isinstance('foo', float)
False

Example 2¶

>>> class Foo: pass
...
>>> class Bar(Foo): pass
...
>>> b = Bar()
>>> isinstance(b, Foo)
True
>>> isinstance(Bar, Foo)
False
>>> isinstance(Bar(), Foo)
True

Example 3¶

>>> isinstance(u'foo', (basestring, str, unicode))
True
>>> isinstance(u'foo', (basestring, str))
True
>>> isinstance(u'foo', (basestring))
True
>>> isinstance(u'foo', (str))
False