Simple way of handling errors

[Peter Otten]

TomF wrote:

> As a relative newcomer to Python, I like it a lot but I'm dismayed at
> the difficulty of handling simple errors.  In Perl if you want to
> anticipate a file-not-found error you can simply do:
> 
> open($file)  or die("open($file): $!");
> 
> and you get an intelligible error message.  In Python, to get the same
> thing it appears you need at least:
> 
> try:
>     f=open(file)
> except IOError, err:
>     print "open(%s): got %s" % (file, err.strerror)
>     exit(-1)
> 
> Is there a simpler interface or idiom for handling such errors?  I
> appreciate that Python's exception handling is much more sophisticated
> but often I don't need it.
> 
> -Tom

While you are making the transition you could write

from perl_idioms import open_or_die

f = open_or_die("does-not-exist")


with the perl_idioms module looking like

import sys

def open_or_die(*args):
    try:
        return open(*args)
    except IOError, e:
        sys.exit(e)

Peter