[Tutor] Exception Handling

[Alan Gauld]

"David" <david at abbottdavid.com> wrote

>> Is this the correct way to handle a ValueError exception and should 
>> I get in the practice of catching them?

Yes and Yes.

Although I woulfd move the except clause up to just after the input 
section
(which is where the errors will be raised). A couple of other comments
below:

> while True:
>     try:
>         yr = int(raw_input("What year were you born? "))
>         mn = int(raw_input("What month were you born? "))
>         dy = int(raw_input("What day were you born? "))
>         curr_date = time.strftime("%Y %m %d", time.gmtime())
>
>         ynum = int(time.strftime("%Y", time.gmtime())) - int(yr)
>         mnum = int(time.strftime("%m", time.gmtime()))
>         dnum = int(time.strftime("%d", time.gmtime()))
>         mn = int(mn)
>         dy = int(dy)

Put the except here, its easier to see where the error came from.
And since the error message only applies to these int() calls its
more accurate.

>         if mn - mnum:
>             print "You are %i" % ynum, "years old."

This is an odd use of string formatting, more usually you
would only use one string:

             print "You are %i years old" % ynum

Either that or just insert the value and not use formattting:

             print "You are", ynum, "years old."

>         else:
>             ret = int(ynum) - 1

You don't need the int conversion here since yuou already
did it at the input stage. But...

>             print "You are %i" % ret, "years old."

Why not just

        print "You are %i" % ynum-1, "years old."

HTH,

-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld