True, but for class instances you can access the "secret" attribute
__class__ to get at the class.
For many other purposes of type checking you also need much more
information than what type() returns; e.g. in many situations tuples
of different length should be considered different types, and the
types of the items should be considered as well. Luckily it isn't too
hard to write a function that returns a unique string with the
required properties -- type() is just a low-level tool to be used by
such a function.
--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <guido@cwi.nl>
"I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune."