How to catch str exception?

[Cameron Simpson]

On 15May2009 13:36,  <> wrote:
| "anuraguniyal at yahoo.com" <anuraguniyal at yahoo.com> writes:
| > there are many such exceptions and hence it is not feasible to catch
| > them all or know them all unless i go thru src code.
| 
| But that is true of all exceptions.  The alternative seems to be a
| "checked exception" scheme like Java's, which in practice imposes a
| huge pain on programmers, who have to modify type signatures all up
| and down the call hierarchy every time they raise another exception at
| the bottom level.

I used to think that too, but it's not entirely true.

Aside: I loved the discipline that comes with Java's interface strictness
but found the language felt cumbersome; Python's duck typing approach
is far simpler to work with but lets you be a lot sloppier because many
implementation shortcomings will only show at runtime, whereas Java's
rigidity can be used to catch a lot of stuff at compile time.

Anyway, to the exception thing: if you're throwing a "new" type of
exception then either you've changes the object model and Java rightly
complains, if you're breaking the object encapsulation and you should
be catching the new exceptions fairly low down and either handling it or
raising a "conformant" exception the caller expected. This isually happens
across a type boundary; for example a data structure that just happens to
use an SQL db for backing structure should be catching any SQL exceptions
and recasting them to an appropriate outer exception for the user,
probably inserting the underlying SQL exception into the new exception
as an attribute.

Anyway, my basic point here is that the asserting that your have to
"modify type signatures all up and down the call hierarchy every time they
raise another exception" should have a fairly limited scope. Unexpected
exceptions _shouldn't_ be happening. We routinely write stuff like:

  try:
    n = int(foo)
  except ValueError, e:
    print >>sys.stderr, "not an integer: %s" % foo

If int() starts throwing non-ValueError exceptions then many many
programs break. Java would prevent one from changing int() in such
a fashion outright. Python requires the self-discipline on the part of
the implementer of int() to raise only ValueError exceptions, and
internally handle anything else at a lower level.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

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