[Python-ideas] Inline 'raises' expression

[Fredrik Johansson]

On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 4:01 PM, Paul Hankin <paul.hankin at pobox.com> wrote:
> There's not much need for a language modification; you can code it up
> directly. The obvious problem with what you want is that it's only
> good if you want to catch a single exception.
>
> def raises(thunk, exn):
>    try:
>        thunk()
>        return False
>    except exn:
>        return True

True, but that's a lot of noise for something very simple. And the
extra required "lambda:" makes the "raises" expression much less
readable.

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 1:47 AM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:
> Fredrik Johansson wrote:
>
>> one could just write
>>
>>    assert 1/0 raises ZeroDivisionError
>
> It's been pointed out that using assert for testing
> is not the best idea, since then you can't test that
> the code works properly with assertions turned off.

Good point, though I've never personally felt the need to run Python
with assertions turned off. (It would arguably be more useful if
assertions were enabled on a per module basis, but this is a
tangential matter.)

Fredrik