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Re: How much sanity checking is required for function inputs?

Started byChristopher Reimer <christopher_reimer@icloud.com>
First post2016-04-17 21:04 -0700
Last post2016-04-17 21:04 -0700
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  Re: How much sanity checking is required for function inputs? Christopher Reimer <christopher_reimer@icloud.com> - 2016-04-17 21:04 -0700

#107239 — Re: How much sanity checking is required for function inputs?

FromChristopher Reimer <christopher_reimer@icloud.com>
Date2016-04-17 21:04 -0700
SubjectRe: How much sanity checking is required for function inputs?
Message-ID<mailman.137.1460955847.6324.python-list@python.org>
On 4/17/2016 3:18 PM, Michael Selik wrote:

> I'd rather turn the question around: how much sanity checking is
> necessary or useful? You'll find the answer is "surprisingly little"
> compared to your experience in Java.

I'm looking for a pythonic approach to sanity checking. From what I read 
elsewhere, sanity checking belongs in the unit tests and/or library 
classes designed for other people to use. I haven't seen many examples 
of sanity checks that is common in Java.

> For example, you don't need to
> explicitly check whether the color is present in your dictionary,
> because it'll give you a KeyError if you look up a bad key.

Without the sanity check against the constant dictionary, the color 
variable could be anything (it should be a string value). Looking at the 
code again, I should relocate the sanity checks in the Piece base class.

> Why does the len of positions need to be 16?

The positions variable is list of coordinates for 16 chess pieces (eight 
pawns, two rooks, two knights, two bishops, a king and a queen) for each 
color, locating the pieces on either the bottom quarter (i.e., [(1,1), 
..., (2,8)]) or the top quarter (i.e., [(7,1), ..., (8,8)]) of the board.

Thanks,

Chris R.

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