Indentifying types?

[Terry Reedy]

Oltmans wrote:
> I'm reading from a file that contains text like
> 
> ----
> 5
> google_company
> apple_fruit
> pencil_object
> 4
> test_one
> tst_two
> ----
> 
> When I read the integer 5 I want to make sure it's an integer.
> Likewise, for strings, I want to make sure if something is indeed a
> string. So how do I check types in Python? I want to check following
> types
> 
> 1- integers
> 2- strings
> 3- testing types of a particular class
> 4- decimal/floats

You read the lines of a file as text strings.
You can convert a string with int() or float() or get ValueError if 
invalid.  Note that decimal int literals are also float literals.