table built-in types for data representation type category type name description none numbers type(noneint long the null object none integer arbitrary-precision integer (python onlyfloating point complex number boolean (true or falsecharacter string unicode character string (python onlylist tuple range of integers created by xrange((in python it is called range dictionary mutable set immutable set sequences mapping sets float complex bool str unicode list tuple xrange dict set frozenset the none type the none type denotes null object (an object with no valuepython provides exactly one null objectwhich is written as none in program this object is returned by functions that don' explicitly return value none is frequently used as the default value of optional argumentsso that the function can detect whether the caller has actually passed value for that argument none has no attributes and evaluates to false in boolean expressions numeric types python uses five numeric typesbooleansintegerslong integersfloating-point numbersand complex numbers except for booleansall numeric objects are signed all numeric types are immutable booleans are represented by two valuestrue and false the names true and false are respectively mapped to the numerical values of and integers represent whole numbers in the range of - to (the range may be larger on some machineslong integers represent whole numbers of unlimited range (limited only by available memoryalthough there are two integer typespython tries to make the distinction seamless (in factin python the two types have been unified into single integer typethusalthough you will sometimes see references to long integers in existing python codethis is mostly an implementation detail that can be ignored--just use the integer type for all integer operations the one exception is in code that performs explicit type checking for integer values in python the expression isinstance(xintwill return false if is an integer that has been promoted to long floating-point numbers are represented using the native double-precision ( -bitrepresentation of floating-point numbers on the machine normally this is ieee which provides approximately digits of precision and an exponent in the range of lib fl ff