Conceptual Review (page 27 of 55)

Another form of conditional execution is the try & except conditional. This conditional execution captures certain expected and unexpected errors. If a statement in the "try" conditional throws an error, then the except block executes. The statements in the except clause or except block are ignored if there is no error in the try block.

Essentially, Python starts by executing the sequence of statements in the try block. If all goes well (i.e., no statement or expression throws an error), it skips the except block. If an error occurs in a statement or expression in the try block, Python jumps out of the try block and executes the statements in the except block.

Why use try and except instead of just relying on python generated Traceback messages?

1. To prevent the program from crashing when an error occurs.
2. To handle errors gracefully, providing useful feedback to the user or logging the error in a file that may be analyzed later.
3. To debug and recover from unexpected scenarios, like invalid user input, missing files, or network errors.