&gt;  What&#x27;s wrong with using &quot;isinstance(lst, str)&quot; when necessary?<p>In order for it to be like the Perl6 implementation I would have to check against every type of iterable AFAIK. For example, a generator would be perfectly acceptable, but is there a unique function I could check with hasattr?<p>Clearly you feel that sigils are intrusive in Perl 6, but having written a bunch I find it quite enjoyable, and they&#x27;re pretty easy to find in the documentation too. Ultimately, you can use variables without sigils, but with caveats: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;doc.perl6.org&#x2F;language&#x2F;variables#Sigilless_variables" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;doc.perl6.org&#x2F;language&#x2F;variables#Sigilless_variables</a>