Re: [pygame] "Try" For World Loading

[Laura Creighton <lac@xxxxxxxxxx>]

In a message of Sun, 20 Nov 2005 00:16:57 EST, Kris Schnee writes:
>I'm working on a system for loading parts of the game world as "zones" 
>with names determined by coordinates. If the player moves outside a 
>zone, the game will look for a zone with a certain name to load it. But 
>the file for that zone might not exist. I'm about to write the function 
>so that it uses the "try" statement to look for the file. Is that bad 
>for some reason, or even "bad form?" Is there a reason to do things a 
>different way, namely looking at a list of all files and saying "if 
>desired_filename in list_of_files, load?"
>
>Kris

The first way you suggested is the preferred form, the second way
is 'not Pythonic'.  see: http://groups.google.se/group/comp.lang.python/browse_thread/thread/66083a5d944ceb9b/a0dd5e0ae60efdce?lnk=st&q=%22Look+Before+you+leap%22+author%3AAlex+author%3Amartelli&rnum=16&hl=sv#a0dd5e0ae60efdce

(or go to Google groups and Google comp.lang.python for 
'Look before you Leap'.  Alex Martelli likes talking about why this is
usually not such a good idea.)

A good reason to do it would be that what you are wrapping your try around
takes such an enormous long time to fail that it makes your game
lurch around like a zombie.  If you aren't looking for your files on
a local disk, say, but have to make an request over the internet,
this could be a problem for you, depending on how fast it takes the
other end to serve up the files.

Laura