canonical file access pattern?

[John J. Lee]

Hans-Joachim Widmaier <hjwidmaier at web.de> writes:

> Am Tue, 30 Dec 2003 12:00:52 +0100 schrieb Rene Pijlman:
[...]
> > Then this would need to be the algorithm:
> > 
> > try:
> >     f = file("spam.txt", "w")
> > except IOError, e:
> >     # Handle open() error
> >     pass
> > else:
> >     try:
> >         try:
> >             # read/write to the file
> >             pass
> >         except IOError, e:
> >             # Handle read/write errors
> >             pass
> >     finally:
> >         try:
> >             f.close()
> >         except IOError, e:
> >             # Handle close error
> >             pass
> 
> While my first thought was: Why is the finally needed here? The close()
> might just as well be the end of the else-suit. But it slowly dawns on me:
> If there is another exception than IOError in the read/write suite,
> closing of the file wouldn't take place.
> 
> > Not very pretty, but I can't think of a simplification that does not
> > violate one of the assumptions.
> 
> Yes, I would second that. Alas, this means that the wonderful pattern
> 
> for line in file(filename, "r"):
>     process_line(line)
> 
> is unusable for any "production quality" program. ;-(
[...]

If that were true, why did exceptions get invented?  If you don't need
to do something different in all those except: clauses, then don't put
them in.  As you know, the nice thing about exceptions is that you're
allowed to handle them in sensible places, so typical usage is like
this:

def frob(filename):
    f = file(filename, "w")
    try:
        # read/write to the file
    finally:
        f.close()

def blah():
    try:
        frob(filename)
    except IOError, e:
        # try something else, or
        print e.strerror


or, even better:

def blah():
    frob(filename)


Shock, horror, where's the except IOError:, you ask?!  It's in the
calling function, of course.

Also, if you want to catch both OSError and IOError, note that
EnvironmentError is their common base class.


John