[Python-Dev] Syntax for "except"

Greg Ewing greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz
Tue Feb 10 19:19:32 EST 2004


"Edward C. Jones" <edcjones at erols.com>:

> Why was Python syntax designed so
>     except (TypeError, ValueError):
> is OK but
>     except [TypeError, ValueError]:
> is forbidden.

My guess would be that exception matching needs to be fast, so
special-casing for tuples is desirable, and allowing more general
sequences as well would add so little utility that it's not considered
worth the extra code.

Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept, +--------------------------------------+
University of Canterbury,	   | A citizen of NewZealandCorp, a	  |
Christchurch, New Zealand	   | wholly-owned subsidiary of USA Inc.  |
greg at cosc.canterbury.ac.nz	   +--------------------------------------+



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