Quicker way than “try” and “except” ? - Python

Question

I\'m often having code written as follows

try:
  self.title = item.title().content.string
except AttributeError, e:
  self.title = None

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Answer 1

Your question focuses on the speed of this operation. First, why do you think this operation is slow? Second, there isn't a faster way to access the attributes. Even trying to avoid the catch by checking for the attribute first will likely be slower, simply because of the Python conditionals needed to check if the attribute exists. Also, hasattr attempts to read the attribute, and catches AttributeError, returning False. So checking for the attribute will actually involve a try/except anyway.