"Fredrik Lundh" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Cameron Laird wrote: > > how do I know that the NameError means VARIABLE didn't resolve, > > rather than that it did, but that evaluation of > > commands.VARIABLE() itself didn't throw a NameError? My usual > > answer: umm, unless I go to efforts to prevent it, I *don't* know > > that didn't happen. > > two notes: > > 1) getattr() raises an AttributeError if the attribute doesn't > exist, not a NameError. > > 2) as you point out, doing too much inside a single try/except often > results in hard- to-find errors and confusing error messages. the > try-except-else pattern comes in handy in cases like this: > > try: > f = getattr(commands, name) > except AttributeError: > print "command", name, "not known" > else: > f()
Gah. As is often the case, Frederick has avoided my mistakes and said what I wanted to say, better. -- \ "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though | `\ nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is." -- | _o__) Albert Einstein | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
