On Sat, Feb 22, 2014 at 01:15:13PM +1300, Greg Ewing wrote:
> Eli Bendersky wrote:
> >For instance, it is sometime non-trivial to know which exceptions some
> >function may throw. When you write a try...raise statement, you think
> >hard about covering all the bases. In an expression you're unlikely to,
>
> Speak for yourself. I don't think I would put any less
> thought into which exception I caught with an except
> expression as I would for an except statement.
+1
With the possibly exception of messing about in the interactive
interpreter, "catch as much as possible" is an anti-pattern. If you're
not trying to catch as little as possible, you're doing it wrong.
> In fact, an except expression may even make it easier
> to catch exceptions in an appropriately targeted way.
> For example, a pattern frequently encountered is:
>
> result = computation(int(arg))
>
> and you want to guard against arg not being a
> well-formed int. It's tempting to do this:
>
> try:
> result = computation(int(arg))
> except ValueError:
> abort("Invalid int")
>
> But that's bad, because the try clause encompasses
> too much. Doing it properly requires splitting up the
> expression:
>
> try:
> i = int(arg)
> except:
> abort("Invalid int")
> else:
> result = computation(i)
>
> With an except expression, it could be written:
>
> result = computation(int(arg)
> except ValueError: abort("Invalid int"))
Nice example! Except I'd lay the code out a bit better to emphasise
which part is being guarded:
result = computation(
int(arg) except ValueError: abort("Invalid int")
)
Actually, not quite so nice as I first thought, since you're relying on
the side-effects of abort() rather than returning a value. But apart
from that quibble, the ability to guard *small* subcalculations without
needing a visually heavy try...block is a good use-case.
--
Steven
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