🐍INTRODUCTION TO ERROR HANDLING IN PYTHON

Errors are a natural part of programming, and Python provides powerful tools to handle them gracefully without crashing your program.

What is Error Handling?

When you run a Python program, it may encounter unexpected situations such as dividing by zero, accessing a file that doesn’t exist, or using an undefined variable. These situations cause errors. If errors are not handled, your program will stop immediately with a traceback message.

Error handling is the process of anticipating and managing these situations so that your program can continue running or fail gracefully.

Types of Errors in Python

Python errors are generally classified into two main categories:

• Syntax Errors: Mistakes in the structure of your code. For example:

  
  print("Hello"   # Missing closing parenthesis
          

  Python won’t even run until syntax errors are fixed.
• Exceptions (Runtime Errors): Errors that occur while the program is running. For example:

  
  x = 10 / 0  # ZeroDivisionError
          

  These are where error handling becomes important.

Why is Error Handling Important?

Without error handling, even a small error can crash your entire program. With error handling, you can:

• Provide user-friendly error messages instead of scary tracebacks
• Recover from errors and continue execution
• Handle known risks (like missing files or wrong user input)
• Write reliable and professional-quality code

How Python Handles Errors

Python uses a mechanism called exceptions for error handling. When an error occurs, Python:

1. Raises an exception (for example, `ZeroDivisionError`).
2. Stops the program unless the exception is properly handled.
3. You can catch these exceptions using try and except blocks, and decide how your program should respond.

Next Steps

Now that you know the basics of error handling, let’s dive deeper into each part:

• Understanding Errors
• Try and Except Basics
• Finally and Else

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