Re Interest check in some delicious syntactic sugar for "except:pass"

[Tim Chase]

Oren Elrad wrote:
> """ code involving somefile """
> try:
> ........os.remove(somefile)
> except:
> .......pass     # The bloody search indexer has got the file and I
> can't delete it. Nothing to be done.


I admit there are times I've done something similar, usually with 
what I call my "int0" and "float0" utility functions which 
roughly translate to "give me a stinkin' int/float and if 
something goes wrong, give me 0, but the return result better 
darn well be an int/float!" functions.  But as you describe and 
was later commended as a right-ish way to approach it, 
abstracting that off into a function with minimal code in the 
try: block is the right way to go.

-tkc


def int0(v):
   """converts v to a int, or returns 0 if it can't"""
   try:
     return int(v)
   except: # usually a ValueError but catch all cases
     try:
       # int("1.1") fails so try float()ing it first
       return int(round(float(v)))
     except:
       return 0

def float0(v):
   """converts v to a float, or returns 0 if it can't"""
   try:
     return float(v)
   except:
     return 0.0