A newbie question.
How can I tell from within a function whether a particular argument is a sigular type, or a complex type?
For instance, in:
def abc(arg1)
How do I know if arg1 is a single type (like a number), or a list?
In C++, you would do it with function overloading. If arg1 is always simple type, I wouldn't care what it is. But what if I *do* need to know whether arg1 is a list or not?
I hate to have to have 2 functions: 1 for simple types, and one for list types and then do something like:
abc_simple(1.0) abc_list([1.0,2.0])
Generally, if I have a function that might take one or more args, I'd write it like:
def abc(*args)
and then call it with one of the following:
abc(1.0)
abc(1.0, 2.0)
abc(*[1.0, 2.0])If you're really stuck with the one argument signature, I tend towards the "ask forgiveness rather than permission" instead of the "look before you leap" style. Something like:
def abc(arg1):
try:
x = iter(arg1)
except TypeError:
x = iter([arg1])
# now do whatever you want with xNote that this might give you some problems if you want to pass in strings (since they're iterable). Can you give some more specifics on the problem? What is the actual function you want to write and what kind of arguments to you expect to receive?
Steve -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
