On Thu, 02 Dec 2010 15:53:49 +0000, Tim Harig wrote: > If you are using exceptions to try to catch bug then you are using them > improperly. Exceptions (with the exception (no pun intended) of > AssertionError) are designed to catch error conditions, not bugs.
I agree. But more specifically some exceptions seem too broad to catch specific errors that occur in MY code rather than in a system call or a library call. Also writing my own exception objects and raising exceptions seem to add too much of complexity to what is essentially a simple problem. This is what I was trying to explain. > Actually, finer grained error handling commonly covers up bugs. If you > want to find bugs, you want to make the program prone to crashing if a > bug is present. It is all too easy to accidently mistake the return > value of a function as error condition and handle it rather the letting > the program crash. By separating the results from the transmission of > error conditions (in effect taking error conditions out of band) then > you make it much harder to make such a mistake because you have to > explicity indicate which error conditions your code is capable of > generating. Doesn't the same finer grained exception mechanism make it prone to the same problems? Actually return values of functions which I write myself can be as specific and to the point. I could make it as fuzzy or as precise as I like. This is no doubt, something that I could emulate with an exception as well, but only make it slightly more complex with no obvious benefit. As I said before, the way exceptions are caught seem to me to be the most confusing bit. Non-atomic operations always worry me. What if my function which is wrapped inside a try block has two different statements that raised the same exception but for different reasons? With error handling I could probably handle it right below the statement which was called and thus reduce the problem??? -- Harishankar (http://harishankar.org http://lawstudentscommunity.com) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
