Try–except execution flow in Python - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Try-except execution flow

📖 Scenario: You are writing a simple calculator program that divides two numbers. Sometimes users might enter zero as the divisor, which causes an error. You want to handle this error gracefully.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that safely divides two numbers using try and except to catch division errors and print a friendly message.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create two variables with exact values for numerator and denominator

Create a variable to store the error message

Use a try-except block to perform division and catch ZeroDivisionError

Print the result or the error message

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Handling errors like division by zero is common in calculators, data processing, and user input validation to keep programs running smoothly.

💼 Career

Knowing how to use try-except blocks is essential for writing robust software that can handle unexpected problems without crashing.

1

DATA SETUP: Create numerator and denominator variables

Create two variables called numerator and denominator with values 10 and 0 respectively.

Python

# Create numerator and denominator variables
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use = to assign values to variables.

2

CONFIGURATION: Create an error message variable

Create a variable called error_message and set it to the string 'Cannot divide by zero.'.

Python

numerator = 10
denominator = 0
# Create error_message variable
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Remember to use quotes for strings.

3

CORE LOGIC: Use try-except to divide safely

Write a try block that divides numerator by denominator and stores the result in result. Add an except ZeroDivisionError block that sets result to error_message.

Python

numerator = 10
denominator = 0
error_message = 'Cannot divide by zero.'
# Use try-except to divide numerator by denominator
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use try: and except ZeroDivisionError: blocks.

4

OUTPUT: Print the result

Write a print statement to display the value of result.

Python

numerator = 10
denominator = 0
error_message = 'Cannot divide by zero.'
try:
    result = numerator / denominator
except ZeroDivisionError:
    result = error_message
# Print the result
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(result) to show the output.