Re: Python or Perl for a Debian maintainance project?

[Matthias Urlichs <smurf@smurf.noris.de>]

Hi, Andrew Suffield wrote:

>> All of this doesn't change the fact that Perl code actually has to test
>> for errors _all_the_time_ if it wants to be reliable -- it's very easy
>> to overlook exactly the one call which will later bite you.  :-/
> 
> "It's very easy to write broken code".
> 
The whole _point_ of this (part of the) discussion is that in Python, code
that doesn't explicitly test for errors is perfectly OK because the
interpreter does it for you.

IMHO that's a Good Thing, because the cases where you really truly don't
care about errors are not really common -- or at least they shouldn't be,
in any reasonably-sized program.

You might call that semantic sugar, but then so are most of the
reasons I like to use a script language. I like to concentrate on
different things, when I program, than to affix an "or die" after every
system call. Oh yes, except for things like read() which can return a
perfectly reasonable zero...

-- 
Matthias Urlichs