Message105218
Based on questions asked on freenode's #python by people reading the tutorial I would like to suggest two improvements to http://docs.python.org/tutorial/errors.html#handling-exceptions :
- Mention the older "except SomeException, e:" syntax too, not just "except SomeException as e:". I have had people ask me to help them upgrade to a newer python because they thought their version of python did not support catching exception instances (their distro python being 2.5). A big fat warning that they're reading the Python 2.6 tutorial (with links to older tutorials) may also work.
- Mention "except IOError as e" before mentioning "except IOError as (errno, strerror):". The latter is an advanced and relatively unusual trick, combining regular exception catching and unpacking. Those two concepts need to be explained before the combination is. I have had people ask me how to do "except KeyError as (key, insert_something_here):" because they thought they *always* needed those parens there.
(perhaps just not mentioning unpacking here at all, using "except IOError as e:" and then using e.errno would make more sense, especially since "except IOError as (errno, strerror):" is a SyntaxError in python 3 and up (because of the unpacking) and python 2.5.x and down (because of the "as")...)
I can try to write a patch to the documentation if you like. |
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Date |
User |
Action |
Args |
2010-05-07 17:25:34 | marienz | set | recipients:
+ marienz, docs@python |
2010-05-07 17:25:34 | marienz | set | messageid: <1273253134.08.0.147248211976.issue8652@psf.upfronthosting.co.za> |
2010-05-07 17:25:32 | marienz | link | issue8652 messages |
2010-05-07 17:25:32 | marienz | create | |
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