How to Check Variable Is String or Not in Python

1. Use the type() Function to Check if a Variable Is a String or Not
2. Use the isinstance() Function to Check if a Variable Is a String or Not

The string datatype is used to represent a collection of characters. This tutorial will discuss how to check if a variable is a string type or not.

Use the type() Function to Check if a Variable Is a String or Not

The type() function returns the class type of passed variable. The following code shows how to use this function to check if a variable is a string or not.

value = "Yes String"
if type(value) == str:
    print("True")
else:
    print("False")

Output:

True

However, it is worth noting that this method is generally discouraged and is termed unidiomatic in Python. The reason behind that is because the == operator compares the variable for only the string class and will return False for all its subclasses.

Use the isinstance() Function to Check if a Variable Is a String or Not

It is therefore encouraged to use the isinstance() function over the traditional type(). The isinstance() function checks whether an object belongs to the specified subclass. The following code snippet will explain how we can use it to check for string objects.

value = "Yes String"
if isinstance(value, str):
    print("True")
else:
    print("False")

Output:

True

In Python 2, we can use the basestring class, which is an abstract class for str and unicode, to test whether an object is an instance of str or unicode. For example,

value = "Yes String"
if isinstance(value, basestring):
    print("True")
else:
    print("False")

Output:

True

For using the above method in Python 3, we can use the six module. This module has functions that allow us to write code compatible with both Python 2 and 3.

The string_types() function returns all the possible types for string data. For example,

import six

value = "Yes String"
if isinstance(value, six.string_types):
    print("True")
else:
    print("False")

Output:

True