Types of Variables

1.4. Types of Variables#

Python has different types of variables. We’ll look at a couple of common ones here.

1.4.1. Numeric Variables#

Two of the most commonly used numeric variables are integers and floats. These are types of real numbers.

  • integer: a whole number

    • x = 5

    • num = 21

  • float: a decimal number

    • cost = 1.50

    • pi = 3.14159

1.4.2. Text Variables#

  • string: text

    • name = 'steve'

    • message = "great job"

Note

You can use either single quotes ' ' or double quotes " " to indicate a string as long as you start and end with the same type.

  • char: a single character

    • letter = 'a'

    • symbol = '@'

Note

Python does not distinguish between characters and strings and will treat a single character as a string. But other languages will treat them differently!

1.4.3. Checking Variable Types#

If you want to know the type of a certain variable, we can use the type function.

print(type(3))
print(type(3.0))
print(type('3'))

<class 'int'>
<class 'float'>
<class 'str'>