[Python-Dev] IO module precisions and exception hierarchy (original) (raw)

Michael Foord fuzzyman at voidspace.org.uk
Mon Sep 28 12:03:35 CEST 2009

Greg Ewing wrote:

Michael Foord wrote:

Some of the error messages are truly awful though as things stand, especially for someone new to Python. Try to read from a file handle opened in read mode for example: IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor Subdividing the IOError exception won't help with that, because all you have to go on when deciding which exception to raise is the error code returned by the OS. If the same error code results from a bunch of different things, there's not much Python can do to sort them out.

Well, the file type knows what mode it is opened in so catching these errors is really not difficult at all.

Michael

The error messages produced for the various error codes could perhaps be improved, but that's an orthogonal issue.

-- http://www.ironpythoninaction.com/ http://www.voidspace.org.uk/blog

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