type

class type(object) class type(name, bases, dict)

With one argument, return the type of an object. The return value is a type object and generally the same object as returned by object.__class__.

The isinstance() built-in function is recommended for testing the type of an object, because it takes subclasses into account.

With three arguments, return a new type object. This is essentially a dynamic form of the class statement. The name string is the class name and becomes the __name__ attribute; the bases tuple itemizes the base classes and becomes the __bases__ attribute; and the dict dictionary is the namespace containing definitions for class body and is copied to a standard dictionary to become the __dict__ attribute. For example, the following two statements create identical type objects:

>>> class X:
...     a = 1
...
>>> X = type('X', (object,), dict(a=1))

See also Type Objects.