[Tutor] Is my style OK in this elementary student exercise?

[Angus Rodgers]

Fear not, I won't post all my exercises to the Tutor list!  But
when I seem to be doing something a little elaborate, it seems a
good idea to ask if I'm doing anything silly.  In this exercise:

<http://python.pastebin.com/d7e245e0f>   (retention: 1 day)

my /conscious/ worries are:

  (i) trapping the exception StandardError may, for all I know,
be a daft thing to do;

 (ii) I'm not bothering to be consistent in my use of single and
double string quotes (but I don't know how much difference this 
makes, to readability and/or reliability);

(iii) some of my lines of code extend beyond 79 characters (but
again, I don't know how much this matters);

 (iv) correlatively with (iii), my indentation perhaps looks a
little extreme (perhaps suggesting a redesign, I don't know);

  (v) I'm bound to be doing other silly things that I don't even
know about ("unknown unknowns").

Any comments? (I don't expect the Spanish Inquisition!)

-- 
Angus Rodgers