meaningful exception handling

Exception handling should provide meaningful feedback and use appropriate exception types rather than failing silently or relying on fragile string-based checks. Avoid catching exceptions without proper logging, user feedback, or recovery mechanisms. Use built-in Python exceptions when available instead of creating custom ones unnecessarily.

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Prompt

Reviewer Prompt
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Exception handling should provide meaningful feedback and use appropriate exception types rather than failing silently or relying on fragile string-based checks. Avoid catching exceptions without proper logging, user feedback, or recovery mechanisms. Use built-in Python exceptions when available instead of creating custom ones unnecessarily.

Key practices:

  • Never catch exceptions silently - always log warnings or provide user feedback
  • Use built-in exception types (like FileNotFoundError) instead of custom exceptions when appropriate
  • Avoid checking exception messages with string comparisons as they can be fragile across versions or locales
  • Provide clear error context to help with debugging

Example of problematic silent handling:

try:
    result = subprocess.run(libreoffice_command, capture_output=True, text=True)
    # ... process result
except Exception as _:
    # Silent failure - no logging or user feedback
    pass

Better approach with meaningful handling:

try:
    result = subprocess.run(libreoffice_command, capture_output=True, text=True)
    # ... process result  
except subprocess.SubprocessError as e:
    logger.warning(f"LibreOffice conversion failed: {e}")
    return None
except FileNotFoundError:  # Use built-in exception
    raise FileNotFoundError(f"File {path} does not exist")

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