Checking mail?

[Dylan Parry]

Hi,

I am by no means a Python programmer, but I am dabbling with it and trying
to create a simple program that reports how many emails I have to
download. So far, using the poplib extension, I have got:

    def checkEmail():
        email = poplib.POP3('mail.mydomain.ext')
        email.user('user')
        email.pass_('password')
        number = email.stat()
        email.quit()
    
        if (number[0] == 0):
            return "No new emails"
        elif (number[0] == 1):
            return "1 new email"
        else:
            string = str(number[0])
            string += " new emails"
            return string

Which is fine as long as the server doesn't timeout, or my machine isn't
doing something else that takes up all my bandwidth! Coming from a Java
background, I was wondering if there is anything similar in Python that
allows me to do something like:

    try {
        something();
    }
    catch (exception e) {
        somethingelse();
    }

Where if the "something()" fails then the "somethingelse()" will be ran
instead? Or is there another way that I can deal with timeouts in Python?

Cheers,

-- 
Dylan Parry
http://www.webpageworkshop.co.uk - FREE Web tutorials and references