Friday Filosofical Finking: Import protections

[DL Neil]

On 18/04/19 8:29 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 18, 2019 at 6:21 AM DL Neil <PythonList at danceswithmice.info> wrote:
>> Do you bother with exception handling for import statements?
>> Can we assume that if such a catastrophic error occurs, it is quite
>> acceptable for the code to fall-over in a tumbling-fumble?
> 
> I try/except around import statements only if it's possible for the
> program to recover from the exception. For instance, something that
...

User reactions have been covered elsewhere 'here'.


> For something that is absolutely required for the program to continue,
> what would be in your exception handler? Print a message to stderr and
> exit? That's exactly what not-catching-the-exception is for. I do
> sometimes annotate the imports, though:

We disagree. Although I hasten to add, if the error is trapped, then 
there should be some added-value over what is system-provided.

Application's log? SysLog? Particularly in a centralised or server-based 
application especially web-services.


> from dataclasses import dataclass # ImportError? Upgrade to Python 3.7
> or pip install dataclasses
> 
> If that bombs out, the entire line will get printed, comment and all,
> and there isn't really anything else that I would want to do with the
> exception.
> So I guess the best way to answer your question is with another
> question: If such a catastrophic error occurs, what ELSE would your
> code do than fall over? If there's an answer to that question, then
> sure, catch the ImportError. Otherwise don't.

Kudos! To whom are you addressing such annotations?

-- 
Regards =dn