Comparison with False - something I don't understand

[D'Arcy J.M. Cain]

On Sat, 4 Dec 2010 17:07:45 +0000 (UTC)
Harishankar <v.harishankar at gmail.com> wrote:
> Of course not. But going by the replies here, it appears that Python has 
> made exceptions as the "norm" for error handling which is ironical 
> considering the meaning of the word "exception". I find a bit cumbersome 
> that exceptions are advocated for certain conditions which can be sanely 
> worked around in the application's logic and even avoided, rather than 
> waiting for them to get caught and providing an unsatisfactory result.

It just seems to me that you have a semantic issue rather than a
technical one.  If the word "exception" was replaced by "check" or
something else would that make the process easier to swallow?

  try:
    somefunc()
  check ValueError:
    handle_error()

Whatever it's called it's just flow control.

> > Quite often it's impossible for the function to know what needs to be
> > done when a specific conditions arises, in which case (presumably) you
> > have to return some error code and test for that ...
> 
> Not necessarily. I wasn't talking about low-level or built-in exceptions. 
> I was talking about using exceptions in my programming where often the 
> function is reasonably confident of the kind of errors it is likely to 
> incur. I did not start this as a criticism of Python's exceptions as 
> such. I just expressed my personal aversion to using them in my own code.
> 
> However, in my next project I have started using exceptions and will keep 
> an open mind on how it turns out. So far it doesn't seem too bad.

Open minds are good.

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D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.net>         |  Democracy is three wolves
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