Exceptions are not just for errors (was: My first Python program)

[Emmanuel Surleau]

> Seebs <usenet-nospam at seebs.net> writes:
> > On 2010-10-13, Chris Rebert <clp2 at rebertia.com> wrote:
> > > For future reference, the significant majority of things in Python
> > > raise exceptions upon encountering errors rather than returning
> > > error values of some sort.
> > 
> > Yes.  I'm getting used to that -- it's a bit of a shift, because I'm
> > used to exceptions being *exceptional* -- as in, not a failure mode
> > you would expect to see happening.
> 
> From that expectation, it's an even more fundamental shift. Python
> encourages (and tends toward) raising exceptions in any exceptional
> circumstance — that is, in any circumstance that isn't the usual
> behaviour for the function.
> 
> So, for example, an exception (StopIteration) is how iterables signal
> that they've finished iterating; but that's not an error, only an
> exception. Likewise for the ‘str.index’ example given earlier.

I'd say more succintly that Python uses (at times) exception for flow control. 
Whether that's elegant or not is debatable.

Cheers,

Emm