How do I check whether a file exists without exceptions?

Question

How do I check if a file exists or not, without using the try statement?

Answer 1

You could try this (safer):

try:
    # http://effbot.org/zone/python-with-statement.htm
    # 'with' is safer to open a file
    with open('whatever.txt') as fh:
        # Do something with 'fh'
except IOError as e:
    print("({})".format(e))

The ouput would be:

([Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'whatever.txt')

Then, depending on the result, your program can just keep running from there or you can code to stop it if you want.