Python Programming – Exception Handling

Python Programming – Exception Handling

While writing Python code, certain errors may occur. In the first place, these errors can prevent the program from being executed by the interpreter. These errors are called compile-time errors. For an instance, forgetting to follow the exact syntax of a particular construct such as if statement or making a spelling mistake, missing a semicolon or colon, may cause an interpreter/compile-time error. The program gets executed only after these errors are rectified. Let us consider a program given in Code 8.1. This program determines whether a number is even. In the if statement, we see that colon (:) is missing. The execution of this code raises a syntax error as presented in Fig. 8.1.

• Introduction to Python Programming – Testing and Debugging
• Python Programming – Python Loops
• Python Programming – Assert Statement

Code: 8,1, Illustration of interpreter time error (syntax error).

# This program illustrates syntax error number=input(‘Enter a number:’) number=int(number) if number%2==0 print(‘Number is even’) print(‘out of if block’)

Exception

There exist some errors which occur at run time in the program. For instance, attempting to divide by zero or accessing a list, which is not defined, opening a file that does not exist are common examples of run time errors. The run time error is called an exception. By the occurrence of these errors, Python creates an exception object. If not handled properly, it prints a traceback to that error along with some details about why that error has occurred. For instance, consider a simple code given in code: 8.2. We see that there is no syntax error in this code, therefore it executes without any error. The output of this code is given in Fig. 8.2., We see if the user inputs the value of number as 0 then the expression c=15/number evaluates to c=15/0, then due to division by zero, zero division Error exception occurs and we don’t obtain the output.

Code: 8.2. Illustration of runtime error (Exception)

#This program illustrates run time error number=input(‘Enter a number) number=int(number) C=15/Number Print(c)

Python Built-in Exceptions

python language detects exceptions if they occur during the exception of a program. There exists numerous built-in python exception listed in Table 8.1. with the description of each.

Exception	Cause
AssertionError	Raised when an assert statement fails.
AttributeError	Raised when attribute assignment or reference fails.
EOFError	Raised when the output( ) functions hit the end-of-file condition.
FloatingPointError	Raised when a floating-point operation fails.
GeneratorExit	Raise when a generator’s close( ) method is called.
ImportError	Raised when the imported module is not found.
IndexError	Raised when the index of a sequence is out of range.
KeyError	Raised when a key is not found in a dictionary.
Keyboardlnterrupt	Raised when the user hits the interrupt key (Ctrl+c or delete).
MemoryError	Raised when an operation runs out of memory.
NameError	Raised when a variable is not found in the local or global scope.
NotlmplementedError	Raised by abstract methods.
OSError	Raised when system operation causes the system-related error.
OverflowError	Raised when the result of an arithmetic operation is too large to be represented.
ReferenceError	Raised when a weak reference proxy is used to access a garbage collected referent.
RuntimeError	Raised when an error does not fall under any other category.
Toleration	Raised by next() function to indicate that there is no further item to be returned by the iterator.
SyntaxError	Raised by the parser when a syntax error is encountered.
IndentationError	Raised when there is incorrect indentation.
TabError	Raised when indentation consists of inconsistent tabs and spaces.
SystemError	Raised when interpreter detects an internal error.
SystemExit	Raised by sys.exit() function.
TypeError	Raised when a function or operation is applied to an object of incorrect type.
UnboundLocalError	Raised when a reference is made to a local variable in a function or method, but no value has been bound to that variable.
UnicodeError	Raised when a Unicode-related encoding or decoding error occurs.
UnicodeEncodeError	Raised when a Unicode-related error occurs during encoding.
UnicodeDecodeError	Raised when a Unicode-related error occurs during decoding.
UnicodeTranslateError	Raised when a Unicode-related error occurs during translating.
ValueError	Raised when a function gets argument of correct type but improper value.
ZeroDivisionError	Raised when the second operand of division or modulo operation is zero.

Summary

In this chapter, we have discussed interpreting time errors (syntax errors) and run-time errors. Run time errors are also called exceptions. Various built-in exceptions are available in the Python language. However, the user can create their own exceptions for handling different circumstances, which can occur during the execution of the program. All exception handling constructs try, except, finally are discussed with the programming illustration of each of them. User-defined exceptions are also discussed with examples.

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