[Python-ideas] with ... except

[Mark Hackett]

On Friday 08 Mar 2013, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> Le Fri, 8 Mar 2013 11:24:02 +0100,
> 
> Masklinn <masklinn at masklinn.net> a écrit :
> > On 2013-03-08, at 11:13 , Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > A common pattern for me is to write a with statement for resource
> > > cleanup, but also handle specific errors after that. Right now,
> > > this is a bit cumbersome:
> > >
> > >  try:
> > >      with open("somefile", "rb)" as f:
> > >          ...
> > >  except FileNotFoundError:
> > >      # do something else, perhaps actually create the file
> > >
> > > or:
> > >
> > >  try:
> > >      with transaction.commit_on_success():
> > >          ...
> > >  except ObjectDoesNotExist:
> > >      # do something else, perhaps clean up some internal cache
> > >
> > >
> > > How about adding syntax sugar for the above, in the form of a
> > > with ... except clause? It would nicely reduce spurious
> > > indentation, as with the try / except / finally which, long ago(!),
> > > helped reduce indentation and typing by removing the need to nest a
> > > try / except inside a try / finally.
> >
> > Isn't it essentially the same suggestion as Alan Johnson's last week?
> > http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-ideas/2013-March/019730.html
> 
> Hmm, I hadn't read that thread. "try with" looked sufficiently ugly
> that I wasn't interested :-)
> 

Ugh, someone is going to suggest we have "try ... without" now...

And it's so angocentric. How come the calls are to repeat *English grammar*? 
German grammar would probably be a lot clearer for a compiler/interpreter.

Of course, that wouldn't be possible if we still had the 80-column limit... 
:-)