How to return an "not string' error in function?

[breakfastea at gmail.com]

Thank you for your inputing which has been great inspirational:)

What I tried to do is to write a string.split() module, so I started
with:

def spilt(a):
    l=[]
    index=0
    if not isinstance(a, basestring): #Or isinstance(a, str)
        return
    for i in len(a):
        if a[i]=' ':
            item=a[index:i]
            l.append(item)
     ..................

I'm still working on it:)

Thank you again

Peace

PS: Is str() the same as repr() ?



Cameron Laird wrote:
> In article <1158848968.493858.96600 at k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
>  <breakfastea at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Thank you so much it answers my humble question perfectly:)
> >
>
> HOWEVER, to answer you final question, yes, there is a different
> and, in general, better, way.  While there's a lot to say about
> good Python style and typing, I'll summarize at a high level:
> you shouldn't have to check types.  I can understand that you
> are working to make a particular function particularly robust,
> and are trying to account for a wide range of inputs.  This is
> healthy.  In stylish Python, though, you generally don't need
> type checking.  How would it be, for example, if someone passed
> the number 3 to your function.  Is that an error?  Do you want
> it automatically interpreted as the string "3"?  You can achieve
> these results withOUT a sequence of
>
>   if isinstance(...
>   elif isinstance(...
>   ...
>
> perhaps with something as simple as
>
>   my_input = str(my_input).
>
> One of us will probably follow-up with a reference to a more
> detailed write-up of the subject.