[Python-Dev] Go \x yourself

[Guido van Rossum]

> I'm quite certain that this should be a SyntaxError, not a ValueError:
> 
>     >>> "\x1"
>     SyntaxError: two hex digits are required after \x
>     >>> "\x\x"
>     SyntaxError: two hex digits are required after \x
> 
> Otherwise, +1.  Sounds great.

No, problems with literal interpretations traditionally raise
"runtime" exceptions rather than syntax errors.  E.g.

>>> 111111111111111111111111111111111111
OverflowError: integer literal too large
>>> u'\u123'
UnicodeError: Unicode-Escape decoding error: truncated \uXXXX
>>>

Note that UnicodeError is a subclass of ValueError.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.pythonlabs.com/~guido/)