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Basic Data Types in Pythonby@aswinbarath
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1,307 reads

Basic Data Types in Python

by Aswin BarathJanuary 1st, 2021
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Data types are one of the building blocks of python. And You can do a lot of things with data types!

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Data types are one of the building blocks of python. And You can do a lot of things with data types!

Fact: In python, all data types are implemented as an object.

A data type is like a specification of what kind of data we would like to store in memory and python has some built-in data types in these categories:

  • Text type: str
  • Numeric types: int, float, complex
  • Sequence types: list, tuple, range
  • Mapping type: dict
  • Set types: set, frozenset
  • Boolean type: bool
  • Binary types: bytes, bytearray, memoryview

Now, let's demistify all these data types by using type() function to display the data type of the variable.

Text type

str

str stands for a string in python used for storing text in python.
Strings can be written either in single quotes or double quotes in python, hence your choice.

Example:

Output:

Hello, world!
<class 'str'>

Numeric types

int

int stands for integer used to store integers (positive and negative numbers).

Example:

Output:

4
<class 'int'>

float

float stands for floating-point numbers (decimal point numbers).

Example:

Output:

3.14
<class 'float'>

complex

complex numbers have a real and imaginary part, which are each a floating-point number.
Complex numbers can be written in two forms:
real + (imag)j
complex(real, imag)

Example:

Output:

(5+10j)
<class 'complex'>

Sequence types

list

A list is data type where you can store a collection of data.
A list can also contain different data types.
A list is ordered and changeable and allows duplicate members.

Example:

Output:

['Captain America', 'Iron Man', 'Thor', 'Hulk', 'Black Widow', 'Hawkeye']
<class 'list'>

tuple

tuple is data type where you can store a collection of data.
A tuple can also contain different data types.
A tuple is ordered and unchangeable and allows duplicate members.

Example:

Output:

('Captain America', 'Iron Man', 'Thor', 'Hulk', 'Black Widow', 'Hawkeye')
<class 'tuple'>

range

The range type represents an immutable (unchangeable) sequence of numbers.
Commonly used for looping a specific number of times in for loops.

Example:

Output:

range(0, 10)
<class 'range'>

Mapping type

dict

dict stands for dictionary in python.
Dictionaries are used to store data values in key: value pairs.
A dictionary is a collection which is unordered, changeable and does not allow duplicates.

Example:

Output:

{'Learning': 'Programming', 'Language': 'Python', 'Day': 4}
<class 'dict'>

Set types

set

set is data type where you can store a collection of data.
A set can also contain different data types.
A set is unordered and unindexed and allows no duplicate members.

Example:

Output:

{'Black Widow', 'Iron Man', 'Thor', 'Hawkeye', 'Hulk', 'Captain America'}
<class 'set'>

frozenset

frozenset data type can be created by frozenset() function.
The frozenset() function accepts an iterable and returns an unchangeable frozenset object (which is like a set object, only unchangeable).

Example:

Output:

frozenset({'cherry', 'banana', 'apple'})
<class 'frozenset'>

Boolean type

bool

bool stands for boolean in python.
Booleans represent one of two values: True or False.

Example:

Output:

True
<class 'bool'>
False
<class 'bool'>

Binary types

bytes

bytes data type can be created in two forms:
bytes() function
prefix 'b'

Example:

Output:

b'hello'
<class 'bytes'>
b'Hello'
<class 'bytes'>

bytearray

bytearray() function returns a bytearray object.
It can convert objects into bytearray objects.

Example:

Output:

bytearray(b'\x00\x00\x00\x00')
<class 'bytearray'>

memoryview

memoryview() function returns a memory view object from a specified object.

Example:

Output:

<memory at 0x2b4f7a8a7408>
<class 'memoryview'>

Note

As you might have observed earlier, some data types can be also implemented using their constructors.

This same technique can also be applied to every data type.

Example:

Output:

Hello, World!
4
3.14
(5+10j)
['Captain America', 'Iron Man', 'Thor', 'Hulk', 'Black Widow', 'Hawkeye']
('Captain America', 'Iron Man', 'Thor', 'Hulk', 'Black Widow', 'Hawkeye')
range(0, 10)
{'Learning': 'Programming', 'Language': 'Python', 'Day': 4}
{'apple', 'cherry', 'banana'}
frozenset({'banana', 'cherry', 'apple'})
True
False
b'\x00\x00\x00\x00'
bytearray(b'\x00\x00\x00\x00')
<memory at 0x2b8346a29408>

Also published at https://dev.to/aswin2001barath/data-types-in-python-14ol