The python programming language is not a typed language like Java, C/C++, etc. However, python supports all the primitive data types like other languages.
Here are the list of data types supported by python programming language.
- integer
- string
- float
- boolean
- list
- dictionaries
- set
- tuple
- files
The first four types are primitive types and the remaining five types are user-defined types. We will not discuss each one of them in detail.
Primitive Types
The primitive types of data is common to all programming languages. Though python is not a typed language it understand the primitive types.
Integer Type
This type contains all the number or integers that include both negative and positive numbers.
For example
my_Integer = 244 print(type(my_Integer))
In the code above, we assigned an integer to variable called my_Integer. To know the type of variable, use the type() function which prints the following results.
<class 'int'>
Each type has a class in python and variables are instances of these classes.
String Type
The string type is a group of character that is enclosed within a double or single quotes. It can be a single word or a sentence or sometimes numbers are displayed as strings.
my_string = "hello" print(type(my_string))
In the code above, we have declared and assign “hello” to the variable called my_string. You can use the type() function to verify the type of the variable.
<class 'str'>
Float Type
Python does not have a C style ‘float‘, but it has a C style ‘double‘. Any number that is a decimal number with a fractional part in python is a double precision number. You can control the fraction part in a number of ways. Here we used the format() function to control the fraction of a decimal number.
Consider the following example.
my_float = 23.4667445778967 # Method 1 # prints total 5 numbers only including fraction print(format(my_float,'.5g') # Method 2 # prints 2 digits in the fraction part print(format(my_float,'.2f') # check the type of my_float print(type(my_float))
The output of the program is given below.
23.467 23.47 <class 'float'>
The method 1 gives a result of 23.467 which has exactly 5 digits. The method2 results in 23.47 because we only allowed 2 digits in the fractional part.
Boolean Type
The python Boolean type only holds two values – True or False. The numeric value of True is 1 and 0 for False.
Consider the following example
my_Bool = True print(type(my_Bool))
The output of the above program gives the type of the variable.
<class 'bool'>
User-Defined Type in Python
The user-defined type contains primitive types and it is a named type constructed by the user. We already mentioned earlier that list, dictionaries, set, tuple and files are the five user-defined types in python. Let us now discuss them in detail.
List Type
A list type is equal to an array in JavaScript which contains multiple data type. In programming language such as Java or C++ , the array is typed and therefore, contain only one type of element. The python list is flexible and supports multiple data type. Consider the following example.
my_list = ['Apple',"Oranges", 25, 55.77] print(type(my_list))
The output of the above code, will print the data type of my_list which is list.
<class 'list'>
Dictionaries in Python
Dictionary in python is an object with name/value pair. It is similar to JavaScript declaration of object literals. Here is an example of dictionary.
# dictionary defining an employee
employee = {
'firstName': 'Jon',
'lastName' : 'Rambo',
'age' : 45,
'designation' : 'Manager',
'salary' : 35000
}
# print the employee
print(employee)
print(type(employee))The output of the above program is given below.
{'firstName': 'Jon', 'lastName': 'Rambo', 'age': 45, 'designation': 'Manager', 'salary': 35000}
<class 'dict'>Set in Python
The set is similar to a mathematical set in python. You can use a set in various ways. Here is a way to declare a set.
my_set = {"apple","oranges",33.55,99}
print(type(my_set))The result of the above code is as follows. It prints the data type of the variable my_set.
<class 'set'>
Tuple Type in Python
Not only sets, but you can also create tuple in python. The tuple in python is unchangeable or immutable. To change the value of a tuple, first change it to list and then back to tuple.
my_tuple = ("Dog","Cat","Mice")
print(type(my_tuple))The output is the type of the variable called my_tuple.
<class 'tuple'>
Files in Python
The python programming language allows you to manipulate files like other programming languages. Here file is treated as an object with properties and methods.
file = open("dummy.txt")
print(type(file))The output is as follows.
================ RESTART: C:/Python_projects/file-handling.py ================ <class '_io.TextIOWrapper'>
The ‘io’ is a module in python and it helps to deal with various type of IO that the python program performs. An object from this module is called a file object or a stream object. The common types of IO performed by Python are: text IO, binary IO and raw IO. In the above program we are using a Text IO (_io.TextIOWrapper).
