On 04/04/2021 19:05, Shreyan Avigyan wrote:
When importing the curses module, be it on Windows or Darwin or UNIX-based OS
or any other platform, if the _curses module is not found then just a
ModuleNotFoundError is raised. But this error is not very informational in case
of _curses module. Since the curses module is packaged with the Python
interpreter itself at first it may seem, to beginners especially, that the
Python interpreter was not installed correctly and then they would go searching
for an answer for about 4-5 days.
We know that curses library is not installed on windows by default and may or
may not be present on other operating systems. Most UNIX system have ncurses or
other curses library installed by default.
Python errors have a reputation of being very informational. I would like to submit a PR
to modify the curses module a little bit by declaring a BaseException class and raising
that Exception with the message "_curses module not found. Make sure a curses
library is installed" or some kind of message like that.
But before I do that I would like to take advice from experienced developers
about somethings. Is this change in the exception, raised when _curses module
is not found, acceptable by the Python Community? If it is then should a draft
PEP be submitted or should a PR be directly submitted to
https://github.com/python/cpython?
I don't think this requires a new exception type. The point about
BaseException being a worse choice than ModuleNotFoundError has already
been made.
The stdlib curses module depends on _curses that may not be present,
which is a flaw in my view, and obviously it has taken some research to
find the reason. Your complaint is either against the documentation of
the curses module
(https://docs.python.org/3/library/curses.html#module-curses), for not
telling you sooner, or against the text of the curses module itself.
The how-to (https://docs.python.org/3/howto/curses.html#curses-howto)
does mention the problem and provides pointers to fix it, but
incorrectly states that it is the curses module itself that will not be
found, not the inner _curses. So that may sow additional confusion. I
expect the reasons for this inaccuracy are in the change history.
In curses, the author could have wrapped the specific import in
try-except to raise a more informative ModuleNotFoundError:
try:
from _curses import *
except ModuleNotFoundError:
raise ModuleNotFoundError("_curses! If only this were not a pesky Windows
machine!")
Or something better you choose.
Either the documentation fixes or the code change would make a sensible
PR, I think. Or why not addess all three? (It's surely not a PEP.)
Jeff Allen
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