What tools can be used to determine the type of a variable in Python?

In Python, you can determine the type of a variable in several ways:

1. type() function — returns the type of an object.

x = 10
print(type(x))  # <class 'int'>

2. isinstance() function — checks if an object is an instance of a specified type or its subclass.

x = [1, 2, 3]
print(isinstance(x, list))  # True

3. Type annotations (type hints) — do not determine the type at runtime but assist static code analysis.

def func(a: int) -> str:
    return str(a)

For dynamic runtime checks, type() and isinstance() are most commonly used.