sys.exit()

[Gerrit Holl]

Ivan Voras wrote:
> In a code such as:
> 
> if len(sys.argv) < 2:
>     print "I need arguments!"
>     sys.exit(1)
> 
> Is sys.exit() really a good choice? Is there something more elegant? (I
> tried return but it is valid only in a function)

An alternative that I often choose is:

raise SystemExit("I need arguments!")

This is the same in one line, and I think it is more elegant, because it
is higher-level: you are not using the low-level interface of error codes,
a non-programmer may not understand what '1' means, usually it means success
so that can be very confusing. I prefer raise SystemExit.

Gerrit.

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