why won't slicing lists raise IndexError?

[Random832]

On Mon, Dec 4, 2017, at 13:54, Jason Maldonis wrote:
> Is there any background on why that doesn't raise an IndexError? Knowing
> that might help me design my extended list class better. For my specific
> use case, it would simplify my code (and prevent `if isinstance(item,
> slice)` checks) if the slicing raised an IndexError in the example I
> gave.

Slicing (of strings, lists, tuples, anyway) never raises an IndexError. If the
start is out of range it will return an empty list. I don't know. As for "why",
 it's just how the operation was designed. Perhaps it was considered that an
exception isn't needed because there's no ambiguity (i.e. there's no other
reason a slice operation can return a list shorter than the length implied by
the slice parameters).

Why would this simplify your code? What are you doing that would benefit from
an IndexError here?