Still the __new__ hell ...

[Steve Holden]

greg wrote:
> Paulo da Silva wrote:
>> As a relatively inexperient
>> in python, how could I know that a 'string' is an instance of
>> basestring?
> 
>    isinstance(x, basestring)
> 
> This works because basestring is defined as the
> tuple (str, unicode) and isinstance accepts a
> tuple of types as well as just a single type.
> 
The idea is right, but the detail is completely wrong.

basestring is a *type*.

  >>> basestring
<type 'basestring'>

It's the base class of which both str and unicode are subclasses.

regards
  Steve
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