Python 2.5 Released

dominator writes "It's been nearly 20 months since the last major release of the Python programming language, and version 2.5 is probably the most significant new release of Python since 2.2. The latest release includes a variety of additions to the standard library, language extensions, and performance optimizations. This is a final release, and should be suitable for production use. Read the release announcement, the highlights, what's new, and download it."

Comments

try/except/else/finally

[ttfkam]

Would someone be so kind as to explain this construct for me?

try:
    block-1 ...
except Exception1:
    handler-1 ...
except Exception2:
    handler-2 ...
else:
    else-block
finally:
    final-block

Coming from Java and C++ land, I'm familiar with the idea of

try {} catch (...) {} finally {}

What is the point of else? What does it get you that you didn't have just as easily without it? If no exception is thrown, run it? Isn't that what the content in the try section is for? Will someone provide a use case for this for me please?

Re:Easy transition from Python to Ruby?

[ubernostrum]

Migrating from Python to Ruby is trivial, they're 95% identical. Some idioms are different such as Ruby's use of anonymous functions (called blocks) and different ways of metaprogramming (plus the fact that Ruby uses metaprogrammatic abilities much more often than Python), but the difference between them is far smaller than some people make it to be.

If I moderated, I'd mod this up :)

Seriously, the idioms and conventions of programming in Python and Ruby are the largest differences, not the actual languages themselves:

• Ruby programmers, on average, seem more likely to crack a class open and add new things to it, where Python programmers generally prefer to subclass and do what they need in there.
• Ruby programmers, on average, seem more likely to build domain-specific languages to solve problems, where Python programmers generally prefer other routes (though which route they take will vary depending on the problem).

Et cetera, et cetera. Ruby folks are also big on the arbitrary anonymous blocks, which Python doesn't have, but I've yet to run into a problem I can't solve with a named function, and a lot of the time I end up with cleaner and more understandable code because of it. Which, really, I think is the biggest cultural difference: given a situation where all other things are equal, Ruby focuses on expressiveness (an inherited "there's more than one way to do it" from the Perl in its genes), and Python focuses on clarity and readability.