hasattr() vs try-except block to deal with non-existent attributes

Question

if hasattr(obj, \'attribute\'):
    # do somthing

vs

try:
    # access obj.attribute
except AttributeError, e:
    # deal with Attr         


        

Answer 1

At least when it is up to just what's going on in the program, leaving out the human part of readability, etc. (which is actually most of the time more imortant than performance (at least in this case - with that performance span), as Roee Adler and others pointed out).

Nevertheless looking at it from that perspective, it then becomes a matter of choosing between

try: getattr(obj, attr)
except: ...

and

try: obj.attr
except: ...

since hasattr just uses the first case to determine the result. Food for thought ;-)