| Larch: Data Analysis Tools for X-ray Spectroscopy

# 5.5. Tutorial: Dealing With Errors

When an error exists in the syntax of your script, or an error happens when running your script, an Error or Exception is generated, and the execution of your script is stopped.

## 5.5.1. Syntax Errors

Syntax errors result from incomplete or ill-formed larch syntax. For example:

    larch> x = 3 +
    SyntaxError: invalid syntax
    x = 3 +

        x = 3  +

This indicates that the Larch interpreter could not understand the meaning of the statement ‘x = 3 +’, because it excepts a value after the ‘+’. Syntax errors are spotted and raised before the interpreter tries to evaluate the expression. That is because Larch first fully parses any statements (or block of statements if you’re entering multiple statements or loading a script from a file) into a partially compiled, executable form before executing. Because of this two-step approach (first parse to intermediate form, then execute that intermediate form), syntax errors are sometimes referred to as a parsing errors.

## 5.5.2. Exceptions

Even if the syntax of your script is correct, the logic might not be. In addition, even if the logic is correct for most cases, it might not be correct for all. For example, certain values might cause an error run time:

    larch> n = 1
    larch> print 4.0 / ( n - 1)
    ZeroDivisionError('float division')
    <StdInput>
        print 4.0/(n-1)
              ^^^

which is saying that you can’t divide by 0. This is known as a Runtime Exception. It might indicate a programming error, for example that you didn’t test if the denominator was 0 before doing the division.

Larch (as inherited from Python) has many different types of exceptions, so that dividing by zero, as above, is detected as a different exception from, say, trying to open a file that doesn’t exist:

    larch> fh = open('foo', 'r')
    Error running <built-in function open>
    IOError(2, 'No such file or directory')
    <StdInput>
        fh = open('foo', 'r')
             ^^^

or trying to add an integer and a string together:

    larch> 4 + 'a'
    TypeError("unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'str'")
    <StdInput>
        4 + 'a'

Though they are called exceptions, such problems are fairly common when developing programs or writing scripts. Having a built-in way to test for and handle different kinds of exceptions is an important part of many modern computer languages, and Larch has this capability with its try and except statements.

## 5.5.3. Try and Except

The try statement will execute a block of code and look for certain types of exceptions. One or more except statements can be added to specify blocks of code to execute if the specified exception occurs. As a simple example:

    try:
        x = a/b
    except ZeroDivisionError:
        print 'saw a divide by zero!
        x = 0
    endtry

If b is not 0, x is set to the value of a/b. If b is 0, executing x = a/b will cause a ZeroDivisionError (as we saw above), so the block with the print statement and setting x to 0 will be executed. In either of these cases (no exception, or a handled exception), execution will continue as normal. If a different problem occurs – an “unhandled exception” – such as the case if a holds a string value with b holds an integer, then execution will stop and the corresponding exception will be raised.

There can be several except statements for each try statement, to check for multiple types of problems. These will be checked in order. For example:

    try:
        x = a/b
    except ZeroDivisionError:
        print 'saw a divide by zero!
        x = 0
    except TypeError:
        print "a and b are of different types -- can't divide"
    endtry
    <more statements>

It is sometimes useful to run certain code only when a looked-for error has not occurred. For example, it is often agood idea to test when opening a file for IOError (which covers a range of issues such as the file not being found), and only reading that file if it actually opened. For example, to read in a file into a list of lines, the recommended practice is to do:

    try:
        fh = open(filename, 'r')
    except IOError:
        print 'cannot open file %s!' % filename
        datalines = []
    else:
        datalines = fh.readlines()
        fh.close()
    endtry
    <operate on datalines>

There is a very large number of exception types built into Larch, all inherited from Python. See the standard Python documentation for more details.

## 5.5.4. Raising your own exceptions

In certain cases, you may want to cause an exception to occur. This need is most likely to happen when writing your own procedures, and want to ensure that the input arguments can be handled correctly.

To cause an exception, you use the raise statement, and you are said to be “raising an exception”:

    larch> raise TypeError("wrong data type")