Python Forum

i have a function that needs to test if a value given to it in an argument is a dictionary or not. doing isinstance(thevalue,dict) is not good enough when the value comes from os.environ. but i would want the test to be positive for os.environ and anything like it as well as any genuine dictionary. what kind of test would work?

collections.abc.MutableMapping

Output:
>>> import os
>>> import collections.abc
>>> isinstance(os.environ, collections.abc.MutableMapping)
True
>>> isinstance({}, collections.abc.MutableMapping)
True