How to check if an object is iterable in Python? (original) (raw)

Last Updated : 26 Aug, 2022

In simple words, any object that could be looped over is iterable. For instance, a list object is iterable and so is an str object. The list numbers and string names are iterables because we are able to loop over them (using a for-loop in this case). In this article, we are going to see how to check if an object is iterable in Python.

Examples:

Input: “Hello”

Output: object is not iterable

Explanation: Object could be like( h, e, l, l, o)

Input: 5

Output: ‘int’ object is not iterable

Example 1:

Python3

name = "Hello"

for letter in name:

`` print (letter, end = " " )

Output:

H e l l o

Example 2:

Python3

number = 5

for i in number:

`` print (i)

Output

TypeError: 'int' object is not iterable

However, an int object is not iterable and so is a float object. The integer object number is not iterable, as we are not able to loop over it.

Checking an object’s iterability in Python

We are going to explore the different ways of checking whether an object is iterable or not. We use the hasattr() function to test whether the string object name has __iter__ attribute for checking iterability. However, this check is not comprehensive.

Method 1: Using __iter__ method check.

Python3

name = 'Roster'

if hasattr (name, '__iter__' ):

`` print (f '{name} is iterable' )

else :

`` print (f '{name} is not iterable' )

Output:

Roster is iterable

Method 2: Using the Iterable class of collections.abc module.

We could verify that an object is iterable by checking whether it is an instance of the Iterable class. The instance check reports the string object as iterable correctly using the Iterable class. This works for Python 3 as well. For Python 3.3 and above, you will have to import the Iterable class from collections.abc and not from collections like so:

Python3

from collections.abc import Iterable

name = 'Roster'

if isinstance (name, Iterable):

`` print (f "{name} is iterable" )

else :

`` print (f "{name} is not iterable" )

Output:

Roster is iterable

Method 3: Using the iter() builtin function.

The iter built-in function works in the following way:

• Checks whether the object implements __iter__, and calls that to obtain an iterator.
• If that fails, Python raises TypeError, usually saying “C object is not **iterable,**” where C is the class of the target object.

Code:

Python3

name = "Roster"

try :

`` iter (name)

`` print ( "{} is iterable" . format (name))

except TypeError:

`` print ( "{} is not iterable" . format (name))

Output:

Roster is iterable

Type checking

Here we will check the type of object is iterable or not.

Python3

from collections.abc import Iterable

if isinstance ( 4 , Iterable):

`` print ( "iterable" )

else :

`` print ( "not iterable" )

Output:

not iterable