We can check the datatype of a variable with the built in function type.

Again, we will go into what specifically each of these datatypes mean, however for now, we can see there are a variety of types. We see that x is an int (short for integer), y is a float, and z is a string.

An integer is a whole number, such as: -1, 2, or 3.

While a float is a number with a decimal point representation, such as: 1.0, 2/5, or 3.14159.

A string is a sequence of alpha-numeric characters. They can be empty, or contain one or more characters, including numbers. Also, strings can be enclosed by either single or double quotes, just don't try mixing them. The history behind the name comes from the fact that any kind of text, is a sequence of characters. String has the same meaning as sequence, and so text was referred to by the early programmers as a "string of characters". This phrase then become shortened to just "string".

A boolean is a variable that takes on only one of two possible values, this datatype may also be called a logical. These two possible values are:

• True or False

Booleans are used to represent the truth value of an expression. We will return to them later when we learn conditional expressions in the Query lesson.

The importance of knowing the datatype of an object is that each function is defined to operate on a certain type of data input, such as only integers or only strings. For example, addition only makes sense when adding two numbers together.

However, if we try adding a numeric with a string, Python will return to us an error.

One way to fix this type of issue is by converting the type of a variable to another type, this process is called casting. With casting we can for example convert a variable of type integer to string, or conversely, string to numeric. We can do so with the built-in functions str, int, and float.