Very useful message -- Hah!

[Guido van Rossum]

Dan Grassi <Dan at Grassi.com> writes:

> Well I would rather use python else I would not be here.  But that has to be
> balanced against it's problems when used with Apache.

Dan,

Perhaps I missed, it, but there is at least one systematic approach in
Python that minimizes the kind of bug you ran into that made you start
this thread.  Python programs can be split into several modules.  The
trick is to have a minimal "driver" script that never changes and
which imports the workhorse module; it can catch exceptions caused by
syntax errors in the workhorse module just like runtime errors.

See the slides for a Python/CGI course I gave at SD'99 in DC last
month, at http://www.python.org/doc/essays/ppt/sd99east/.

(Unfortunately the website is down at the moment with a hardware
problem.  We're doing our darndest to get it back up.)

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)