Article of interest: Python pros/cons for the enterprise

[Jeff Schwab]

Matthew Woodcraft wrote:
> Jeff Schwab  <jeff at schwabcenter.com> wrote:
>> The most traditional, easiest way to open a file in C++ is to use an 
>> fstream object, so the file is guaranteed to be closed when the fstream 
>> goes out of scope.
> 
> Out of interest, what is the usual way to manage errors that the
> operating system reports when it closes the file?

By default, the fstream object just sets its "failbit," which you can 
check manually by calling my_stream.fail().  If you want anything 
particular to take place on failure to close a stream, you either have 
to call close manually, or you need a dedicated object whose destructor 
will deal with it.

Alternatively, you can tell the fstream ahead of time that you want 
exceptions thrown if particular actions fail.  There's a convention that 
destructors don't ever throw exceptions, though, so it would be unusual 
to request an exception when close() fails.