Question

I have a list containing strings. These strings are either words or integer values. For example this list might look like this:

['0', 'Negate', '-3', '2', 'SPECIALCASE', '3']

Now, based on their type (integer or string), I want to treat them differently. However, as you have noticed I can’t use isinstace(). I can still use type() and try to convert the integer values using the int() function and put the whole thing in a try-except method to avoid raising errors for the conversion of words. But this seems hackish to me. Do you know the right way of handling this case? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

A pythonic way of “Don’t ask permission, ask for forgiveness”:

lst = ['0', 'Negate', '-3', '2', 'SPECIALCASE', '3']

for item in lst:
    try:
        int_number = int(item)
    except ValueError:
        # handle the special case here

Note, that this should be done if you expect that only few items in the list are going to be the ‘special’ case items. Otherwise do the checks as @doomster advices.