The Samurai Principle

[Tim Chase]

On 09/07/10 12:52, Phlip wrote:
>> try:
>>      return Model.objects.get(pk=42)
>> except Model.DoesNotExist:
>>      return sentinel
>>
>> The flow of control is much clearer this way.
>
> It reminds me of Visual Basic.
>
> And no it's not "much clearer". Exceptions are for catastrophic errors
> that the caller should care not to handle. A "record not found" is not
> a catastrophe.

Exceptions are not limited to catastrophic errors, simply 
exceptional (not the common) cases.  E.g. iterators raising 
StopException when exhausted.

 >>> i = iter(range(2))
 >>> i.next()
0
 >>> i.next()
1
 >>> i.next()
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
StopIteration

 >>> i = iter(range(2))
 >>> for v in i:
...     print v
...
0
1

Running out of things to iterate over is pretty non-catastrophic 
in my book. :)

Using exceptions as in the grandparent's post seem perfectly fine 
to me.  The other option would be to LBYL:

   items = list(MyModel.objects.filter(...))
   if len(items) == 1:
     do_something(items[0])
   else:
     what_the(...)

-tkc