which is more 'pythonic' / 'better' ?

[Steven Bethard]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> try...except... blocks are quick to set up, but slow to catch the
> exception. If you expect that most of your attempts will succeed, then the
> try block will usually be faster than testing the length of the list
> each time.
> 
> But if you expect that the attempts to write the line will fail more
> frequently, then testing will be quicker.
> 
> You will need to do your own testing before hand to find the exact
> cut-off, and expect that cut-off to vary according to the Python
> implementation and version. But a rough rule of thumb is, if you expect
> your code to fail more often than succeed, then test first, otherwise
> catch an exception.

FWIW, these are almost exactly my criteria too.  Exceptions are for 
"exceptional" conditions, that is, things that you expect to happen 
infrequently[1].  So if I think the code is going to fail frequently, I 
test the condition, but if I think it won't, I use exceptions.

STeVe

[1] Note though that what is "infrequent" in Python might be still 
considered "frequent" in other languages.  For example, Java's iterators 
check the result of a .hasNext() method before each .next() call, while 
Python's iterators assume the .next() call will succeed, and simply test 
for the "exceptional" condition of a StopIteration exception.