Python 101: Data Types

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Data Types are kinds of data which tell the compiler or interpreter the kind of inputs a variable can accept.

Python Data Types

1) integers {int} : this is basically whole numbers.

2) floating point numbers {float} : this is basically any number that is not whole (contains decimal points)

3)complex numbers {complex}: they are written in the form of 'x + yj' where x is real and y is imaginary. Example 2+3j

4) List: this is similar to arrays in any other programming language. They are collections of data Types (must not be the same).

a = [1, 3.4, 1+2j, 'help']

Nb: a[2], a[3] etc is used to access individual contents of the list.

Here a[0]=1, a[1]=3.4, a[2]=1+2j and a[3]='help'

You can also use a[0:2] to print everything from [0] to [1] not [2]

And

a[1:] to print everything after [1]

You can also change the content of the list by simply referring to the particular position in the array and switching it like you would any other data 

5)Tuples: you can take this as the constant version of a list. They have everything similar to list except they are declared with parentheses and not square brackets. And unlike list, tuples cannot be altered once declared.

6) Strings: this is a sequence of characters. To represent strings we use single or double quotes while triple quotes are used for multi lined strings.

You can also access individual components of a string using square brackets but you can't change their values

7) Sets: this is just like the normal set you learnt in maths. It is a collection of similar items and is inside the curly braces {}.

Sets in python are programmed to automatically delete duplicated values.

You can also perform all sorts of set functions in python

8) Dictionary: consists of a collection of key-value pairs. A dictionary is a collection which is ordered*, changeable and does not allow duplicates.

If you wish to print an individual item from the dictionary, you use:

NB: type() is used to find out which class a variable belongs to while the isinstance() is used to check if an object belongs to a particular class.

The syntax:

type(a)

isinstance (a,float)

a can be replace with a value and float can be replaced with any data type.