Is it appropriate to raise an EnvironmentError for os.environ?
Why don't you just use
my_value = os.getenv("SOME_VALUE")It will just return None if it doesn't exist. And if you want, you can throw your own errors.
I sense a bit of confusion as to what "EnvironmentError" is. It does not relate to environment variables. The original meaning (in Python 2) for exception EnvironmentError is:
The base class for exceptions that can occur outside the Python system:
IOError,OSError.
With PEP 3151, the IO and OS exceptions were re-worked for Python 3.3, such that they all use OSError as a base class. EnvironmentVariable is kept as an alias of OSError for backwards compatibility.
Some appropriate suggestions for exceptions related to environment variables could be:
RuntimeError- this is a bit of a "miscellaneous" exception type, but it is perhaps appropriate if the local running environment does not have the variable set.ValueError- the environment variable is set, but there is an exception with its value.