converting a sed / grep / awk / . . . bash pipe line into python

[Peter Otten]

Roy Smith wrote:

> In article <g9lvc5$8qq$03$1 at news.t-online.com>,
>  Peter Otten <__peter__ at web.de> wrote:
> 
>> > I might take it one step further, however, and do:
>> > 
>> >>         fields = line.split()[:2]
>> >>         a, b = map(int, fields)
>> > 
>> > in fact, I might even get rid of the very generic, but conceptually
>> > overkill, use of map() and just write:
>> > 
>> >>         a, b = line.split()[:2]
>> >>         a = int(a)
>> >>         b = int(b)
>> 
>> If you go that route your next step is to introduce another try...except,
>> one for the unpacking and another for the integer conversion...
> 
> Why another try/except?  The potential unpack and conversion errors exist
> in both versions, and the existing try block catches them all.  Splitting
> the one line up into three with some intermediate variables doesn't change
> that.

As I understood it you didn't just split a line of code into three, but
wanted two processing steps. These logical steps are then somewhat remixed
by the shared error handling. You lose the information which step failed.
In the general case you may even mask a bug.

Peter