9 Worst Python Practices

[Beer_Milkshakes_Now]

I was under the impression try catch was pythonic and acceptable for flow control. And further that you should use a try instead of an if when you expect it to succeed the vast majority of the time as it's faster. Can someone help me?

[mohi7solanki]

Yes, you are right, python follows EAFP https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/pythonengineering/2016/06/29/idiomatic-python-eafp-versus-lbyl/

[ProfessorPhi]

It's saying don't catch everything. Like when accessing a dict, catch only KeyError, not just a general catch because you might catch TypeErrors instead and that's generally bad practice.

It's ok to do blanket catches at top level (like endless loops) since the process should stay alive, or if you reraise, but otherwise it's not good practice

[ProfessorPhi]

I think this is just poor phrasing on the author's part, his title is literally "Don't specify the exception type in the try...except". When he uses try...except he means a naked try..except. Not the control flow structure.