[Python-Dev] PEP 463: Exception-catching expressions

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Antoine Pitrou writes:

 > Sure, but complaining about inefficiencies without asserting their
 > significance is not very useful.

Since you completely missed the point of my post, I'll explain.  I was
in no way complaining about inefficiencies.

My point was precisely the opposite: to the extent that most 'get'
methods would be implemented in Python, even the minor inefficiency of
creating and suppressing a useless exception can't be avoided with the
LBYL of a get method, because haveattr itself is implemented by
generating and suppressing an exception.

I know that it's not a big deal[1], but it did help swing me to
positive on this PEP.


Footnotes: 
[1]  If it were, somebody would have reimplemented haveattr to avoid
generating an exception.