The rap against "while True:" loops
Jorgen Grahn
grahn+nntp at snipabacken.se
Wed Oct 21 17:52:31 EDT 2009
On Wed, 2009-10-14, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
...
> Setting up a try...except block is cheap in Python. According to my
> tests, the overhead is little more than that of a single pass statement.
>
> But actually raising and catching the exception is not cheap. If you use
> a lot of exceptions for flow control, performance will probably suffer.
You seem to have experimented with this, so you might be right.
> In C++, exceptions are expensive, whether you catch one or not.
I am not sure that is objectively true, even if you consider that
"expensive" among C++ users often means "costs more than a semi-decent
alternative". For example, Stroustrup claimed back in 1994 that the
non-catching case can be implemented at no speed cost or no memory
usage cost (Design and Evolution of C++, 1994, p397).
/Jorgen
--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . .
\X/ snipabacken.se> O o .
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