Python isinstance

Decide if an instance is the given object
isinstance(object, classinfo)

if ((isinstance(data, str) or isinstance(data, unicode)) and data.strip().startswith('<')):
        result = True

 

classinfo can be:
Sequence Types — str, unicode, list, tuple, bytearray, buffer, xrange
Numeric Types — int, float, long, complex

isinstance('1', str)

the result is True