Python Data Types

In programming, a data type defines the kind of data a variable can store, how it is represented in memory, and the operations that can be performed on it.

Python is dynamically typed, which means you don’t need to declare a variable’s data type explicitly; it is automatically inferred based on the value assigned to the variable.

Built-in Data Types in Python

Python has several built-in data types. Here’s a table of all the built-in data types:

Category	Data Type	Example	Description
Numeric	int	5, -9	Integer numbers
	float	3.14, 0.01	Floating-point numbers
	complex	1+2j, 2-3j	Complex numbers
Sequence	str	"hello"	String(text)
	list	[1, 2, 3], [a, b, c]	Ordered, mutable sequence
	tuple	(1, 2, 3), (a, b, c)	Ordered, mutable sequence
Mapping	dict	{"a": 1, "b": 2}	Key-value pairs
Set	set	{1, 2, 3}	Unordered, unique elements
	frozenset	frozenset([1, 2, 3])	Immutable set
Boolean	bool	True, False	Logical values
Binary	bytes	b"hello", bytes(5)	Immutable sequence of bytes
	bytearray	bytearray(b"hello")	Mutable sequence of bytes
	memoryview	memoryview(b"hello")	Memory view of binary data
None Type	NoneType	None	Represents the absence of value

In Python, everything is an object, and all data types are instances (objects) of predefined classes. For example, integers are instances of int class, strings belong to the str class, and so on.

We will explore each data type in detail in its own chapter.

Check the Data Type

You can get the data type of any object using the type() function.

For example:

x = 6
print(type(x)) # Output: <class 'int'>