On Wed, 2009-10-14, Steven D'Aprano wrote: ... > Setting up a try...except block is cheap in Python. According to my > tests, the overhead is little more than that of a single pass statement. > > But actually raising and catching the exception is not cheap. If you use > a lot of exceptions for flow control, performance will probably suffer.
You seem to have experimented with this, so you might be right. > In C++, exceptions are expensive, whether you catch one or not. I am not sure that is objectively true, even if you consider that "expensive" among C++ users often means "costs more than a semi-decent alternative". For example, Stroustrup claimed back in 1994 that the non-catching case can be implemented at no speed cost or no memory usage cost (Design and Evolution of C++, 1994, p397). /Jorgen -- // Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Oo o. . . \X/ snipabacken.se> O o . -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
