Is it possible to raise an exception in the initmodule function of a C extension?

[Alex]

Hi.  I have some code like this at the bottom of my extension module:

/**********************************************************************/
void initpattern_array() {
  (void)Py_InitModule("pattern_array", Pattern_arrayMethods);
  import_array();

  /* Assign memory in which to list patterns now, so that it doesn't
     have to be done over and over again, later. */
  patterns_list = (pattern_array_pattern_score *)calloc(
                                 MAX_PATTERNS_LIST_SIZE,
                                 sizeof(pattern_array_pattern_score));
  
  assert(patterns_list); /* failure means memory overflow. */

  sorted_patterns_list = (pattern_array_pattern_score **)calloc(
                                          MAX_PATTERNS_LIST_SIZE,
                                          sizeof(
                                   pattern_array_pattern_score *));

  assert(sorted_patterns_list); /* failure means memory overflow. */
}
/**********************************************************************/

Is there some way to turn the asserts into python exceptions?  It
doesn't really matter in this case because the assertions are never
going to fail (haha); I'm just a little curious.

TIA.
Alex.

-- 
I'm not an outlier; I just haven't found my distribution yet.  
--- Ronan Conroy