Dangerously over-broad error catching
One of the stock pieces of advice about writing Python code is that basic error checks should be handled by catching the exception that trying to do the operation generates, instead of through explicit checks beforehand. For example, if you are getting the value for a key from a dictionary (what some other languages call a hash), you don't bother checking to see if the key is in the dictionary beforehand; you just try to get the value.
This code might be written like this (especially in examples):
try: result = some_func(dict[key]) except KeyError: # key isn't in dict. result = None
Unfortunately, this code has a serious, somewhat subtle problem;
the try: ... except
clause is too broad.
You probably wanted result
set to None just if dict[key]
didn't
exist. But with this code, it will also happen if some_func
or
anything it calls raises an otherwise uncaught KeyError
exception. Such uncaught KeyError exceptions are probably real bugs
that you want to fix, but this code is hiding them.
You should be doing as little as possible in try/except blocks that catch general errors, because that way you minimize the risk that you're accidentally sweeping unrelated errors under the carpet.
It follows that the worst version of this is to write a try/except
block using 'except:
' so that it catches all exceptions. Please
don't be that lazy.
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