[Python-Dev] thoughts on having EOFError inherit from EnvironmentError? (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido at python.org
Tue Apr 15 04:11:26 CEST 2008

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 6:59 PM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing at canterbury.ac.nz> wrote:

Guido van Rossum wrote: > I don't think of EOFError as an environmental error... This is quite

> a different level of error than what EnvironmentError typically means I think it depends. Any "expected" EOFErrors are going to be caught by the surrounding code before propagating very far. An uncaught EOFError probably means that a file was shorter than you expected it to be, which counts as an environmental error to my way of thinking.

No, that's some kind of parsing error. EnvironmentError doesn't concern itself with the contents of files.

My current coding style involves wrapping an "except EnvironmentError" around any major operation and reporting it as a "File could not be read/written/whatever because..." kind of message. Having EOFError get missed by that would be a nuisance.

But what operations raise EOFError? Surely you're not using raw_input()? It's really only there for teaching.

-- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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