[Tutor] anecdote in the workplace about try,except clause

[Sean 'Shaleh' Perry]

On 18-Aug-2001 alan.gauld@bt.com wrote:
> Since we have established that data doesn't go out of scope...
> 
>> > > for line in file:
>> > >     try:
>> > >         data, garbage = string.split(line, ':')
>> > >     except ValueError:
>               data = line
> 
> should fix it, no?
> 
> The comment about data going out of scope confused me but 
> now that thats been cleared up the simple fix above should 
> work (my trivial tests so far suggest it does...)
> 

the more proper approach in my opinion would be to test if there is a colon to
be begin with.  Which is what I suggested he do.  The actual application was a
summer which read a file and sum the statistics on each line.  The first N
lines were header and other info.