[Zope] How to type check OR better list selector ways

[Robert Joseph Roos]

<dtml-expr="_.type(some_variable_of_unknown_type)"> 

causes a name error, while other python builtins
like _.string(some_int) work fine.  What gives?
Is there some other "zopist" way to type-check?

More generally, is there a better way to deal with the annoying
fact that multiple selectors return a list UNLESS there are
<=1 items selected, in which case they return a single item or None?

(rather than a list with only one member, in the case of 1 object
selected, or an empty list, in the case of none,
which would SEEM to be the consistant way to do things,
since <dtml-in> wouldn't choke.)

=Rob======
====J=====
=====Roos=


And more and more, as I see all these prisons going up,
and everybody being sent off to prison, with three strikes
and so on, they are preparing, really, for a showdown with
the American people. They're already talking about using 
for minor drug offenders the old Army camps that are being 
shut down. To pen them in. More animal farming. The animals
are going to turn one day and bite. And even now, perhaps, 
as we are chatting, there is some young boy or girl who will
grow up and overthrow this government. Because it has 
overthrown our old republic; it seems to be doing its
best to overthrow our Bill of Rights and the Constitution ...

-Gore Vidal, novelist, essayist, and cousin of Al Gore
 1996 interview on "We the People" with Jerry Brown
 <www.wtp.org/radio/transcripts/tr960708.html>