Exception as the primary error handling mechanism?

[Martin v. Loewis]

> You do understand that exceptions aren't just for errors? They are raised 
> under specific circumstances. Whether that circumstance is an error or 
> not is entirely up to the caller.

I think that's a fairly narrow definition of the word error, and
probably also the source of confusion in this thread.

ISTM that there is a long tradition of giving different meaning to
the word "error" in computing. For example, the Unix man pages
list various conditions as "errors" purely by their outcome, and
completely ignoring on whether the caller would consider the result
erroneous - ISTM that a system call reports an "error" iff it is
"unsuccessful".

By that (common) usage of "error", it is a condition determined by
the callee, not the caller (i.e. callee could not successfully
complete the operation). In that sense, it is indeed equivalent
to Python's usage of exceptions, which are also determined by the
callee, and typically also in cases where successful completion is
not possible. Whether these cases are "exceptional" in the word
sense (i.e. deviating from the norm) would have to be decided by
the application, again (which would set the norm).

Regards,
Martin