[Python-ideas] PEP 3151 - Reworking the OS and IO exception hierarchy (again)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Thu Nov 11 13:03:36 CET 2010


On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 7:09 PM, M.-A. Lemburg <mal at egenix.com> wrote:
> Antoine Pitrou wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Georg (who manages the 3.2 release) suggested that I push PEP 3151 (*)
>> in the hope that it can get in before the 3.2 feature freeze.
>>
>> Is there any consensus that PEP 3151 should get in 3.2, or even that it
>> should get in at all?  If there's some process issue that I'm missing,
>> I'd be glad to know about it.
>>
>> (*) http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3151/
>
> In its current state, I don't think it should go in 3.2:
>
> There are a couple of cases where you remove more error classes
> which will cause existing code to catch more errors than what
> the code was designed for, e.g. catching socket.error will
> now also catch all IOErrors, code catching OSErrors will now
> also catch IOErrors.
>
> By making the scope of an except clause larger, you alter the
> semantics of programs using the more fine-grained hierarchies
> in ways which are both difficult to detect and harder to work
> around.

This issue is addressed directly in the PEP by the "Compatibility
Strategy" section. Code which checks errno will not suddenly start
catching additional exceptions due to the merger of IOError and
OSError.

However, I agree with you that the PEP would benefit from keeping
socket.error, select.error and mmap.error as separate IOError
subclasses. Existing code may legitimately be catching those in try
blocks that include other unrelated operations that may raise IOError.

Cheers,
Nick.

-- 
Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia



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