[Python-Dev] Dict suppressing exceptions

[Michael Hudson]

"Jim Jewett" <jimjjewett at gmail.com> writes:

>> It wasn't my idea to stop ignoring exceptions in dict lookups; I would
>> gladly have put this off until Py3k, where the main problem
>> (str-unicode __eq__ raising UnicodeError) will go away.
>
>> But since people are adamant that they want this in sooner,
>
> Is this true for dictionaries specifically?
> 
> Would there really be strong objections to continuing to swallow
> any Exception (not BaseException) raised by __eq__ ?

Armin's reason for changing dictionaries in this way was that enormous
debugging pain was caused by dicts swallowing exceptions raised by
__eq__ methods.  Having the __eq__ methods swallow the exceptions by
themselves would make the situation *worse*, not better.

Cheers,
mwh

-- 
  * vegai wears his reading bra.
  <vegai> umm, I mean glasses                   -- from Twisted.Quotes