how to detect a sequence?

[Skaperen]

what is the best way to detect if a given value is a sequence or not? my first thought is to try to slice it under try/except.

[bowlofred]

You can use the abstract base class definitions in the collections module to compare against.

>>> import collections.abc
>>> isinstance("ABC", collections.abc.Sequence)
True
>>> isinstance([1, 2, 3], collections.abc.Sequence)
True
>>> isinstance((1, 2, 3), collections.abc.Sequence)
True
>>> isinstance({1, 2, 3}, collections.abc.Sequence)
False
>>> isinstance({'a':1, 'b':2}, collections.abc.Sequence)
False