[Python-ideas] Extending error handling on with statements.

[yoav glazner]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 5:09 AM, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 7:33 AM, Jakob Bowyer <jkbbwr at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I personally love using with statements when handling file like objects.
> > This is all well and good until an exception is thrown from the with
> > statement. This is ok if you expect the exception because you can use try
> > and except but personally I feel that another condition to with would
> feel
> > more 'pythonic' this means that you could fail the with statement with an
> > exception jump to the clause, then jump back to the with statement trying
> > the code in the clause e.g. rather than
> > try:
> >     with open('nofile.txt','r') as inp:
> >         #nofile.txt does not exist and throws an exception
> > except IOError:
> >     with open('another.txt','r') as inp:
> >         #carry on where you left off...
> > You could simply have
> > with open('nofile.txt','r') as inp:
> >     #exception here
> > else:
> >     #give a new file to the with statement here and/or run some panic
> code
>
> Don't fight the language, just write a new CM that does what you want:
>
> with open_any('r', 'nofile.txt', 'another.txt') as inp:
>    # If we get here, one of the files was opened
>    # We can use inp.name to find out which one
>
> (And open_any() is pretty easy to write as a generator with an initial
> loop containing a try/catch block, an else clause on the loop that
> throws an exception, and then a subsequent with statement that yields
> the open file)
>
> You *really* need to be careful when wrapping try blocks around with
> statements, as they're almost always too broad (typically, you only
> want to cover the CM creation, not the entire body of the with
> statement).
>

I think it can be a nice to write:

try with open('idonthavethisfile.py'):
..
except Exception as expectedException:
..
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/attachments/20110328/860d6f6e/attachment.html>