Hmm, ok, I can work with that :) If I were writing Python right now, I would argue that if you're going to build this try/except/else/finally construct, each of the three result clauses represent potential outcomes. The fail case, the success case, and the no-matter-what case. And then, you should be consistent about what happens when any of the three are omitted. If `except` is omitted, then catch the generic exception and do nothing and exit. If `else` is omitted, do nothing and exit. And finally, if `finally` is omitted, (surprise!) do nothing and exit. Then, with this as a guiding principle, a user can choose to omit any or all of those actions that they desire, except where it is unreasonable to omit that combination. `try` by itself just silently catches errors and does nothing, and so it seems justifiably invalid as an abuse of the construct. Same principle actually applies to `try/else` in my mind, since it is functionally no different. But the `try/else/finally` statement actually has meaning: try something, do something if it succeeds, and then do something else regardless of what happens. I don't see an obvious reason why it doesn't exist (except perhaps the notion that an else without an except is just semantically odd), and in fact it comes to me as something of a surprise that it's disallowed. All said, I'm obviously not writing Python today—and I also don't maintain it—so I fully appreciate my own dreams of logical consistency above all else are unlikely to be an opinion shared among the developers. I do appreciate that this language is not changing nonstop beneath my feet, so the inertia is frustratingly welcome. -Mitch On Tue, Aug 1, 2023 at 3:06 PM Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2 Aug 2023 at 04:03, Mitch <mitchell.negus.57@gmail.com> wrote:
I'll ask the same question as OP: "Is there a reason why else without except has to be invalid syntax?"
A better question is: "Is there a reason why else without except should be valid syntax?"
ChrisA _______________________________________________ Python-ideas mailing list -- python-ideas@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to python-ideas-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/python-ideas.python.org/ Message archived at https://mail.python.org/archives/list/python-ideas@python.org/message/BMYQ2U... Code of Conduct: http://python.org/psf/codeofconduct/