Written by pythonmarketer

How to Check if a Python Variable is a Tuple

Tonight I Googled “how to check if a variable is a tuple”, expecting to find a Stack Overflow isinstance() snippet. Instead, I found that i could use Python’s type built-in to check if my variable is a tuple:

# Wrong
A = (3,3)
if type(A) is tuple:
    print('Found a tuple.')
# >>> Found a tuple.

I thought that looked like a good solution until I found a section in PEP 8, Python’s official style guide, that said that is not the best way to do this.

# Correct
A = (3,3)
B = 'hello world'
if isinstance(A, tuple):
    print('Found a tuple.')
if isinstance(B, tuple):
    print('Found a tuple.')
else:
    print('Not a tuple.')
# >>> Found a tuple.
# >>> Not a tuple.

Never let yourself believe that you know all you need to know already. There’s always something new to rediscover. And (sometimes) only one best way.

There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.
- Zen of Python