ActiveState Code

Recipe 576872: Exception handling in a single line

The rules of duck typing in python encourage programmers to use the "try...except..." clause. At the same time python with new versions enables to use more powerful list comprehensions (for example Conditional Expressions). However, it is impossible to write the "try...except..." clause in a list comprehension. The following recipe "protects" a function against exception and returns a default value in the case when exception is thrown.

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def safecall(f, default=None, exception=Exception):
    '''Returns modified f. When the modified f is called and throws an
    exception, the default value is returned'''
    def _safecall(*args,**argv):
        try:
            return f(*args,**argv)
        except exception:
            return default
    return _safecall

[safecall(int)(i) for i in '1 2 x'.split()]   # returns [1, 2, None]

[safecall(int, -1, ValueError)(i) for i in '1 2 x'.split()]    # returns [1, 2, -1]

Discussion

Useful when using python in an interactive manner (for example, in ipython).

exception, the function parameter, can be obviously a tuple specifying many exception classes.

Comments

  1. 1. At 12:19 p.m. on 10 aug 2009, Sridhar Ratnakumar said:

    I'd rather not have a default value for the exception parameter .. for that would catch every exception including, for instance, RuntimeError and AssertionError.

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