A "scopeguard" for Python

Jean-Michel Pichavant jeanmichel at sequans.com
Thu Mar 4 11:32:10 EST 2010


Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
> * Jean-Michel Pichavant:
>> Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
>>>>  From your post, the scope guard technique is used "to ensure some 
>>>> desired cleanup at the end of a scope, even when the scope is 
>>>> exited via an exception." This is precisely what the try: finally: 
>>>> syntax is for. 
>>>
>>> You'd have to nest it. That's ugly. And more importantly, now two 
>>> people in this thread (namely you and Mike) have demonstrated that 
>>> they do not grok the try functionality and manage to write incorrect 
>>> code, even arguing that it's correct when informed that it's not, so 
>>> it's a pretty fragile construct, like goto.
>>
>> You want to execute some cleanup when things go wrong, use try 
>> except. You want to do it when things go right, use try else. You 
>> want to cleanup no matter what happen, use try finally.
>>
>> There is no need of any Cleanup class, except for some technical 
>> alternative  concern.
>
> Have you considered that your argument applies to the "with" construct?
>
> You have probably not realized that.
>
> But let me force it on you: when would you use "with"?
>
> Check if that case is covered by your argument above.
>
> Now that you've been told about the "with" angle, don't you think it's 
> a kind of weakness in your argument that it calls for removing "with" 
> from the language?
>
> I recommend that you think about why your argument is invalid.
>
> Or, as I like to say, why your argument is completely bogus.
>
>
> Cheers & hth.,
>
> - Alf
I am using python 2.5, so I know nothing about the with statement, and 
it may possible my arguments apply to it, you could remove it from the 
language, it wouldn't bother me at all.
I just don't see in what you've written (adding a class, with some 
__entry__, __exit__ protocol, using a with statement) what cannot be 
achieved with a try statement in its simpliest form.

Try except may be lame and noobish, but it works, is easy to read and 
understood at first glance.
It looks like to me that 'with' statements are like decorators: 
overrated. Sometimes people could write simple readable code, but yet  
they're tempted by the geek side of programming: using complex 
constructs when there's no need to. I myself cannot resist sometimes ;-)

JM



More information about the Python-list mailing list