Python Programming with the Java™ Class Libraries: A Tutorial for Building Web and Enterprise Applications with Jython

Chapter 7. Errors and Exceptions

Terms in This Chapter

• Call stack

• Catchall bucket, exception handler

• catch statement

• Class-based exception

• else clause

• Error

• except clause

• Exception

• Exception class

• Exception handling

• finally clause

• Granularity

• Most to least specific order

• raise statement

• Throwing versus raising

• try block

• try statement

• Suite

• User-defined versus built-in exception

Bad things happen to good programs: Disks crash, files are corrupted, and batteries fail. Such things are typically more the exception than the rule, and to plan for all of them would make for some very complicated code. That's why modern programming languages like Python have the ability to handle bad things, called exceptions in programming speak.

The old way of dealing with errors was ...