Overuse of try/except/else?

[Cameron Simpson]

On 11May2011 13:37, James Mills <prologic at shortcircuit.net.au> wrote:
| On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 7:34 PM, Jean-Michel Pichavant
| <jeanmichel at sequans.com> wrote:
| > You can reraise the exception without loosing the stack trace.
| >
| > try:
| > ...
| > except SomeException, exc:
| > log(exc)
| > print 'Hello world'
| > raise # "raise exc" would loose the original stack trace
| 
| Valid point :) However I was referring to real experience
| where I've seen code that "catches all any any exception"
| and simply logs it.

I've put code like that in a worker thread occasionally, because there's
nobody "outside" to catch it; the submitter's attention is elsewhere.

These days I think I'd use a LateFunction (a facility of my own which is
a lot like the futures module) which returns a callable when you submit
a function; the worker thread runs the submitted function and catches the
return value or raised exception. Anyone who calls the returned callable
later gets the return value or the exception reraised as appropriate,
so one can avoid the dangerous "catch everything and log" scenario.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

Observing the first balloon ascent in Paris, [Ben] Franklin heard a scoffer
ask, "What good is it?"  He spoke for a generation of scientists in
his retort, "What good is a newly born infant?" - John F. Kasson