Python Data Types

Python Data Types

Variables can hold values, and every value has a data-type. Python is a dynamically typed language; hence we do not need to define the type of the variable while declaring it. The interpreter implicitly binds the value with its type.

The variable a holds integer value five and we did not define its type. Python interpreter will automatically interpret variables a as an integer type.

Python enables us to check the type of the variable used in the program. Python provides us the type() function, which returns the type of the variable passed.

Consider the following example to define the values of different data types and checking its type.

Standard data types

A variable can hold different types of values. For example, a person's name must be stored as a string whereas its id must be stored as an integer.

Python provides various standard data types that define the storage method on each of them. The data types defined in Python are given below.

1. Numbers
2. Sequence Type
3. Boolean
4. Set
5. Dictionary

In this section of the tutorial, we will give a brief introduction of the above data-types. We will discuss each one of them in detail later in this tutorial.

Numbers

Number stores numeric values. The integer, float, and complex values belong to a Python Numbers data-type. Python provides the type() function to know the data-type of the variable. Similarly, the isinstance() function is used to check an object belongs to a particular class.

Python creates Number objects when a number is assigned to a variable. For example;

Python supports three types of numeric data

1. Int - Integer value can be any length such as integers 10, 2, 29, -20, -150 etc. Python has no restriction on the length of an integer. Its value belongs to int
2. Float - Float is used to store floating-point numbers like 1.9, 9.902, 15.2, etc. It is accurate upto 15 decimal points.
3. complex - A complex number contains an ordered pair, i.e., x + iy where x and y denote the real and imaginary parts, respectively. The complex numbers like 2.14j, 2.0 + 2.3j, etc.

Sequence Type

String

The string can be defined as the sequence of characters represented in the quotation marks. In Python, we can use single, double, or triple quotes to define a string.

String handling in Python is a straightforward task since Python provides built-in functions and operators to perform operations in the string.

In the case of string handling, the operator + is used to concatenate two strings as the operation "hello"+" python" returns "hello python".

The operator * is known as a repetition operator as the operation "Python" *2 returns 'Python Python'.

The following example illustrates the string in Python.

Set

Python Set is the unordered collection of the data type. It is iterable, mutable(can modify after creation), and has unique elements. In set, the order of the elements is undefined; it may return the changed sequence of the element. The set is created by using a built-in function set(), or a sequence of elements is passed in the curly braces and separated by the comma. It can contain various types of values.