try -> except -> else -> except?

[Piet van Oostrum]

>>>>> David House <dmhouse at gmail.com> (DH) wrote:

>DH> Hi all,
>DH> I'm looking for some structure advice. I'm writing something that
>DH> currently looks like the following:

>DH> try:
>DH>     <short amount of code that may raise a KeyError>
>DH> except KeyError:
>DH>     <error handler>
>DH> else:
>DH>     <nontrivial amount of code>

>DH> This is working fine. However, I now want to add a call to a function
>DH> in the `else' part that may raise an exception, say a ValueError. So I
>DH> was hoping to do something like the following:

>DH> try:
>DH>     <short amount of code that may raise a KeyError>
>DH> except KeyError:
>DH>     <error handler>
>DH> else:
>DH>     <nontrivial amount of code>
>DH> except ValueError:
>DH>     <error handler>

>DH> However, this isn't allowed in Python.

>DH> An obvious way round this is to move the `else' clause into the `try', i.e.,

>DH> try:
>DH>     <short amount of code that may raise a KeyError>
>DH>     <nontrivial amount of code>
>DH> except KeyError:
>DH>     <error handler>
>DH> except ValueError:
>DH>     <error handler>

>DH> However, I am loath to do this, for two reasons:

>DH> (i) if I modify the <nontrivial amount of code> block at some point in
>DH> the future so that it may raise a KeyError, I have to somehow tell
>DH> this exception from the one that may be generated from the <short
>DH> amount of code that may raise a KeyError> line.
>DH> (ii) it moves the error handler for the <short amount of code that may
>DH> raise a KeyError> bit miles away from the line that might generate the
>DH> error, making it unclear which code the KeyError error handler is an
>DH> error handler for.

>DH> What would be the best way to structure this?

try:
    <short amount of code that may raise a KeyError>
except KeyError:
    <error handler>
else:
    try:
        <nontrivial amount of code>
    except ValueError:
        <error handler>

-- 
Piet van Oostrum <piet at cs.uu.nl>
URL: http://pietvanoostrum.com [PGP 8DAE142BE17999C4]
Private email: piet at vanoostrum.org