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Practical Maya Programming with Python

You're reading from   Practical Maya Programming with Python Unleash the power of Python in Maya and unlock your creativity

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Product type Paperback
Published in Jul 2014
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781849694728
Length 352 pages
Edition 1st Edition
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Author (1):
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Robert Galanakis Robert Galanakis
Author Profile Icon Robert Galanakis
Robert Galanakis
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Table of Contents (12) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Introspecting Maya, Python, and PyMEL FREE CHAPTER 2. Writing Composable Code 3. Dealing with Errors 4. Leveraging Context Managers and Decorators in Maya 5. Building Graphical User Interfaces for Maya 6. Automating Maya from the Outside 7. Taming the Maya API 8. Unleashing the Maya API through Python 9. Becoming a Part of the Python Community A. Python Best Practices Index

Understanding exceptions

The word exception is loaded. The definition seems clear: exceptions are exceptional. I'll say, in Python at least, this definition is simply not true. A normal Python program may handle and raise any number of exceptions as it hums along quite nicely.

Consider the Pythonic idiom we have already pointed out multiple times: Easier to Ask Forgiveness than Permission. It is usually expressed as follows:

try:
    spam.eggs()
except AttributeError:
    spam.ham()

The preceding code is preferred over the following code, which uses a Look Before You Leap style:

if hasattr(spam, 'eggs'):
    spam.eggs()
else:
    spam.ham()

There is nothing exceptional about exceptions in the first example. Describing them as exceptional is more accurate when describing how they behave rather than how they are used.

I prefer the following definition:

"Exceptions are a form of (exceptional) flow control."

To illustrate that definition, consider the following lines of code...

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