Determine the type of an object?

On instances of object you also have the:

__class__

attribute. Here is a sample taken from Python 3.3 console

>>> str = "str"
>>> str.__class__
<class 'str'>
>>> i = 2
>>> i.__class__
<class 'int'>
>>> class Test():
...     pass
...
>>> a = Test()
>>> a.__class__
<class '__main__.Test'>

Beware that in python 3.x and in New-Style classes (aviable optionally from Python 2.6) class and type have been merged and this can sometime lead to unexpected results. Mainly for this reason my favorite way of testing types/classes is to the isinstance built in function.