except clause syntax question

[Mel Wilson]

Chris Angelico wrote:

> On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 9:03 AM, Duncan Booth
> <duncan.booth at invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> Abitrarily nested tuples of exceptions cannot contain loops so the code
>> simply needs to walk through the tuples until it finds a match.
> 
> Is this absolutely guaranteed? The C API for CPython provides:
> (Py2) http://docs.python.org/c-api/tuple.html#PyTuple_SetItem
> (Py3) http://docs.python.org/dev/c-api/tuple.html#PyTuple_SetItem
> 
> which doesn't have massive warnings on it saying "USE THIS ONLY TO
> INITIALIZE A TUPLE" (compare, for instance, _PyTuple_Resize which does
> carry a similar warning). Is the assumption then that we're all
> adults, and that mutating a tuple is like passing a null pointer to an
> API function (aka "loaded gun in proximity to foot")?

Unfortunately, I can't remember the details now, but I once set out to 
create a recursive tuple by using the C API, and it turned out then that the 
C API went to some lengths to prevent anyone being able to do that.  I did 
finally do it in some peculiar way, but it wasn't simple.  The c.l.python 
archives might still have the post where I described it.

	Mel.