What is exception handling in Python?

Exception handling in Python is a mechanism for catching and responding to errors or events that disrupt the normal execution of a program.

It uses the try...except...finally block or try...except...else...finally.

try:
    # Code that may raise an exception
    result = 10 / 0
except ZeroDivisionError:
    # Handling a specific exception
    print("Error: Division by zero!")
except Exception as e:
    # Handling any other exception
    print(f"An error occurred: {e}")
else:
    # Executes if no exceptions occurred in the try block
    print("Operation completed successfully.")
finally:
    # Always executes, regardless of exceptions
    print("Finally block executed.")

Main components:

• try: Block of code where an exception might occur.
• except: Block of code that executes when a specified type of exception occurs in the try block. Multiple except blocks can be used for different exception types.
• else: (Optional) Block of code that executes if no exceptions occur in the try block.
• finally: (Optional) Block of code that always executes, regardless of whether an exception occurred or not. Often used for resource cleanup (e.g., closing files).
• raise: Keyword for explicitly raising an exception.

def divide(a, b):
    if b == 0:
        raise ValueError("Divisor cannot be zero")
    return a / b

try:
    divide(10, 0)
except ValueError as e:
    print(f"Handling user-defined exception: {e}")

Advantages:

• Increases program reliability.
• Isolates code that may cause errors.
• Provides cleaner separation of normal execution logic from error handling logic.